Digital Photography & Imaging - Week 4

14.10.2025 - 17.10.2025 (Week 4)
Cheyenne Liew Khye Yean / 0378330
Digital Photography & Imaging / Bachelor of Design (Hons) Creative Media
Project 1

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LECTURE

Adjustment Layer & Filter

What is an Adjustment Layer?

• Adjustment layers are a group of non-destructive image editing tools that add colour and tonal adjustments to images without changing its pixels.
• Allows for restoration of original images at any time.

   

Basic Understanding of Adjustment Layers

1. Brightness/Contrast

• Makes adjustments to the tonal range of images.
• Brightness slider - adjusts highlights; Contrast slider - adjusts shadows

2. Level

• Modifies the tonal values in an image by adjusting the levels of shadows, midtones, and highlights.

3. Curves

• For adjusting as many points as needed throughout the entire tonal range of the image.

4. Exposure

• For adjusting exposure levels with 3 sliders: Exposure, Offset, and Gamma.
• Exposure adjusts only the highlights; Offset adjusts midtones; Gamma adjusts dark tones only.

5. Selective Colour

• Selectively modifies the amount of a primary colour without modifying the other primary colours in an image.

What is a Filter?

• Filters are a tool for changing colours, adding blur, or creating completely new image effects.

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TUTORIAL

Figure 1.1 Hearst Mansion Tutorial Slides

Figure 1.2 Black & White Recolouring Tutorial Slides

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PRACTICAL

Hearst Mansion

Figure 2.1 Pictures Used for Hearst Mansion Exercise (Background & Shazam), Week 4 (15/10/2025)

For the first exercise, we were required to place an image of Shazam into the Hearst Mansion background and make it look realistic.

Figure 2.2 Hearst Mansion Process, Week 4 (15/10/2025)

Figure 2.3 Hearst Mansion Tutorial Final Outcome, Week 4 (15/10/2025)

Next, we had to do the same thing with a picture of our own.

Figure 2.4 Hearst Mansion Attempt #1, Week 4 (17/10/2025)

I found that following similar adjustments from the tutorial made my picture look over-saturated and unnatural. So, I took it upon myself to adjust the colours a little more by exploring other adjustment settings such as Colour Balance and Selective Colour.

Figure 2.4 Hearst Mansion Final Outcome, Week 4 (17/10/2025)

Image Recolouring

Figure 2.5 Hair & Skin Colour References, Week 4 (15/10/2025)

For the second exercise, we had to recolour a black and white image using the references given above.

Figure 2.6 Black & White Recolouring Process, Week 4 (15/10/2025)

Figure 2.7 Recolouring Tutorial Before & After, Week 4 (15/10/2025)

After that, we were allowed to pick from a file of black and white images to recolour.

Figure 2.8 Recolouring Before & After, Week 4 (16/10/2025)

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REFLECTION

I found this week’s exercises to be quite fun. Although I faced some colouring issues in the Hearst Mansion exercise, it was still enjoyable experimenting with different adjustment layers. I had seen those settings before but never really took the time to explore them properly, so this exercise was actually quite helpful. The second exercise required more precision, but I still had fun adjusting the colours to match the person’s skin tones and hair colour.