23. Selective processing and prominence

This exercise has two parts; one is to decrease the presence of a person in an image and the other is to create the opposite effect, which is to increase the presence of a person in a photograph. I have attempted to do this with one image.

In regard to increasing the presence of a person in an image, I decided to process an image to allow more detail to be seen and simultaneously emphasising the mystery created by a twilight scene. The foreground is dark making almost silhouettes of the buildings with the figure to the right almost invisible.

the original capture; twilight silhouette of a Buddhist site with a barely distinguishable figure.

processed capture: one can now see a person to the right of the image,

an effect that helps to give the image a sense of perspective

in regard to scale (the size of the image) and meaning (the figure is a pilgrim).

To accomplish this effect, I added a Levels layer and used it to brighten the overall image; a gradient added to the mask of the Levels layer helped to retain tonal values in the sky. The foreground is much lighter and allows detail to be seen including the presence of a person.