This exercise is about making local adjustments to a part of an image in such a way that the rest of the image is left unaffected. For this, I chose an image of our son-in-law, Marv, before the London to Brighton bike ride in 2011.
Original image
For the purpose of this exercise, I decided to increase the contrast in the image without changing the contrast of the background. I used the lasso tool in Photoshop and then created a curves adjustment to increase the contrast.
Adjusted image
The result is a little too contrasty but, for the purpose of the exercise, shows how a local area i.e. a figure, can be altered in isolation.
What do I think of this type of adjustment? To some extent it depends on the subject, as there could be cases where features may be darkened for less than innocent purposes but, generally, the adjustments in this category seem to me to be quite legitimate and quite creative effects can be achieved.
This module goes through the various types of 'manipulation' of an image along a continuum which starts with the removal of various blemishes e.g dust spots or lens flare.
A number of techniques/tools are mentioned in the notes for removing such blemishes but what is not mentioned is the fabulous 'Content Aware Fill' which was introduced in Photoshop CS5. I have found this extremely successful for removing dust spots and also other objects like very small birds which can be seen at high magnification. Personally, I have no issue with removing dust spots or tiny objects in order tidy-up an image as the aim is to improve and not change the image
The other blemish, lens flare, is a little different as it may, or may not, be considered a blemish. Indeed, sometimes it can be an interesting feature in a sunset photograph, for example. Again the Content Aware Fill feature can usually deal with any removal considered necessary although I feel that this is a matter of taste rather than an issue that might need justifying.
