Nobody's "Perfect"

For my attempt to create the fantasy version of myself, I used a gorgeous picture of Avril Lavigne. As for the over all result of my creation, I am happy with how it turned out; for my first time. The transformation itself is not what I had expected completely, but over all I am happy with what came out of my creation. Looking back I think that the end result may have come out better if our facial structures were the same. The fact that I know and see how the images that we take for flawless are fake, this allows me to open my eyes and see more than I did before. Knowing that huge magazines and their photographers are okay with taking someone and making them look like they stepped out of a fairy tale is sad. I disagree with it completely, these people are giving all of their readers and/or viewers a false image, and simply lying to all of us so that they can make money. After seeing what I have and learning the material that I have, I know now that the "perfect" image that we all see, and believe is the real deal, is just a dream. This lesson has taught me that the body that girls dream of having is a lie, it doesn't really exist. All of the images and material we see in today's world, tells us that all of us have to be thin, have flawless skin, and the "perfect" features to be beautiful; this lesson about the tricks of the trade helped me see through that lie. 

Before

After

In the process of transforming myself into someone else, I did end up doing some things well; such as, getting my makeup and skin to be as "perfect" as possible, along with whiting my teeth. I took the time to make sure that my face was clear, my eye shadow was even, and that my eyes looked normal. Another thing that I did well was, cropping, scaling, and rotating my face so that it was proportional to hers. I believe I did well on these particular things because, I see them to be the most interesting and "perfect" parts of my transformation. These are the things that look the most natural. 

Just like in anything else, when you do some things good, you end up doing some things bad. In this case I had issues with getting my skin tone and hers to match; since this picture was already edited and she had lighting that helped make her skin tone the color it is, I had to make my skin tone as close as possible. Something else that I am not too thrilled about is, the way that her arms look after I covered up her tattoos. It is all due to the fact that I know it is there, but there are smudges where I covered and blended the colors to cover them, is visible if you look closely.  I believe that these areas are the ones needing improvement because, when you look at the photo closely, you can tell where the mistakes are. Those two are the things that stand out to me the most. Now that I have practiced with this area of Photoshop, I think that I would be able to become better and better each time I did this activity.  

Just Another Day In The Life, Of A Mercy Girl

Throughout the process of using Photoshop I have learned that you can completely change a pictures look. I learned that it is possible to combine a picture into one, re-size a picture by adding or subtracting pixels, cut out a piece of a picture by cropping, or lassoing it, and even change the color scheme of a particular photo. By using the different elements in Photoshop, you are able to add emphasis to a photo, give it a different shape, or make it into a larger picture. Using the tutorials that were given to me, I was able to transform the pictures easier, with skill and creativity. Photoshop allows you to have creativity at your fingertips, and using Photoshop is a way to make your photos even more your own.

In Photoshop I used the tools to create this collage above, and was able to fit everything together by cropping, lassoing, rotating, re-sizing, and moving the photos. To create the photos that I used in my collage I cropped images so that I was getting the part of the picture that was most important to have in my finished product. In a few of the photographs I used the lasso tool. Using this made it possible to cut out the portion of the picture I wanted and use it according to the space that I had. In some cases I had to use crop and lasso on the same photo to get the effect that I wanted, such as the Rachel's Challenge banner and the Walk Poster.  I also re-sized a photo, the Jaguar painting.When I took the picture, it was too close up and blurry. When I made the image smaller by changing the number of pixels per inch it helped clear the photo a bit. The red eye tool, I used this to get rid of the red eye that was on the pictures of people in my collage. By using this tool, you are able to get rid of the "demon look" and make them look human, again! Finally I used the Adjustments color tool, in the picture of the student sleeping in her desk, the color was a bit off because of the lighting. So, using the color adjustments I was able to make the photo look better. It gave her a better skin tone color and made her uniform stand out more by brightening its color, as well.