Photos for 10/7/22

Process Explanation

For my edited photos, I chose to portray different issues surrounding the environment, including deforestation and microplastics in the ocean. In my first image, I wanted to depict a forest fire. I started by taking the pictures I had of the fire, selecting the pieces I needed with the object selection tool, and erasing any backgrounds I didn't need. When I erased the backgrounds, the photos were no longer smart objects until I transformed them back, which was confusing, and I wasn't sure why I ran into this issue. To make the flames look more natural, I played around with the blending type and put each layer under "lighten." This made the flame blend well with the photo and made everything look a lot more natural. I cut out a construction worker using the object selection tool; then I placed him where I wanted him using the transform tool. Finally, I wanted the photo to look a lot more saturated, so I found a textured image I liked and, using the blending modes, I chose overlay and played around with the opacity and exposure of the picture.
With my second image, I wanted to depict microplastics and pollution in the ocean. I began by repeating the same steps of using the magnetic lasso tool to remove small portions from a larger image of microplastics. Then, I cut out a portion of the plastic water bottles from another photo I had and used "Linear Light" to match the lighting to the original image. Lastly, I transformed and moved the two images of plastics on top of the original image of the ocean.

Layers