Image Manipulation

Original image

The subjects of my image of interest are my mother, aunt, and best friend. The shot was a candid one, and captures my mom and aunt resting on a bench and conversing with my friend Kristen. The setting is an organic vineyard in Tuscany, located just down the hill and approximately a mile from Texas A&M’s campus in Italy. 

The image was manipulated in two steps: first, a point operation was applied. Secondly, a neighborhood operation in the form of a digital filter was applied. The point operation increased the image contrast, using a piecewise linear transfer function, and affected each pixel one at a time. I chose to manipulate the image in this order, simply because I felt that contrast adjustment was the higher priority.

In Photoshop, the manipulator simply has to navigate the interface in order to apply point or neighborhood operations. Under  the brightness/contrast submenu, I upped the contrast to a level of forty-two. Mathematically, the lower intensity values of the input image up to level 42 were mapped to zero in the output image. Aesthetically, the shadows became darker and the lighter values brightened. Because it is a numeric transformation, it is irreversible and image information was lost. My reasoning for increasing the image contrast was to emphasize the interesting shadows of the silhouette of the people and bench, and the beautiful halo effect from the atmospheric backlight. Darkening the shadows of the tree on top of the image allows it to better serve as more of a frame. Furthermore, I wanted to draw the eye to the people, rather than the vineyard in the background.

I then applied a Gaussian blur filter to the image. This digital filter uses discrete convolution, which combines an area of pixels to produce each output pixel. In addition, this low-pass filter suppresses the high frequencies of the image, in which details and sharp edges exist. With the Gaussian blur, each output pixel is the mathematical average of the input neighboring pixel values. Based on the preview option, I chose a radius of 3.9 for my Gaussian filter. The blur at this level blended the pixel values to create an almost painted effect. Though the changes are fairly slight, I am pleased at the resulting image, because it achieved the aesthetic effects I wanted: emphasis on the persons, shadows, and backlighting; a muting of green of the olive trees and background; and a painterly rendering.

Manipulated image