-the final photoshop pic

My overall idea was to make it more like an actual
black metal band and be dark, brutal, in a dreary
forest, etc. To accomplish this I fiddled with all
the given tools until I felt it had the look I wanted.


I used Levels and Curves right off the start to get an
overall darker feel and eliminate a lot of the brightness
but also I still wanted our faces to be quite visible so
I increased the lightest highlights as well to counteract
the overall decreaasing light.

As or the color channels I really only used them when using
the Curves tool. I almost removed all blue with the curve
tool and also slightly removed some red to give it a brown
more earthy tone creating a more realistic setting being in
the forrest.

Vibrance, Saturation, Hue, Brightness, and contrast were
all used in the same fashion. I tried to decrease the
overall light of the picture while still retaining a bit of
color and light on our faces. These were also used to
eliminate one big problem which was the fence in the background
and making it so nobody would know it was just in a background.
All three of these worked really well and I do not think
really anybody would know it was in a backyard.

Shadows and Highlights was about my favorite tool here. It
allowed me to really easily control our faces and especially
Jacob's(middle one) face. With the added highlights it really
gave his face definition and it looks considerably better.

The only bad thing that came of all these tools is Devin's(Right one)
face because he did a bad job at putting the makeup on the
contrast and shadows revealed a smudge on his face. I could
probably take it out individually but we have not covered
that yet so it will stay for now.

As for the gradient map I just left it alone because it just was so
powerful and overode a lot of what I worked towards.

-The other final

I just basically increased overall color and look of the pic.








-Curves and Levels
I prefer using the curves tool over the levels tool for colors
but it is easier to get the right brightness for the picture
using levels for me at least. And I changed the color to give it more
of a cold blue feel, especially to the feel. Kind of like a theme he being
cold and that is why he is in the sleeping bag.









-Variations
For the variations tool I used this pic of my cat Looki because
when I took it I did not realize the flash was on so it woke him up
and he ran away so I just have one overly bright picture that
I do not like that much.