Filtered Adjustments

Forum 2: Instagrammish

Before beginning my adjustments and creating my "filter," I set three main objectives for enhancing my photos: 

1. Brighten the images

2. Bring out the red in the photos by adding a red tint to the image

3. Do not "over-filter" and degrade the images

Before

After

Adjustment 1:

The image I began adjusting was the first shot of the car, without the subject in the photo. To achieve my first objective of brightening up the image, I added a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. I wanted to keep the focus of the image on the car, and I discovered as I adjusted the brightness up, other parts of the image became too bright and distracting, like the trees for example. To offset this, I increased the contrast to 40 and moved the brightness back to 10 and wound up with a brightness that I liked. 

The way the natural light shined on the hood of the car also allowed me not to have to do too much adjusting to brightness. Vibrance was another adjustment layer I played with to brighten the image, but I ended up taking it out, as the trees began to take away from the car.

Adjustment 2:

Next, I wanted to add a red tint to the image, so I added a Curves layer to adjust the RGB levels, specifically the red. On the RGB graph, I dragged the red line out slightly at the middle of the line. This helped make the "GT" decal pop like I wanted. I did not want to drag the red adjustment too much more, because it already felt to me like the image might be "over-filtered" with the red. I thought this was the case when I placed the last photo in the filter, as the subject sitting on the car has an orangeish look that I did not love.

Adjustment 3:

Finally, I wanted to ensure that the image was not "over-filtered." The goal of the adjustments was to enhance the photo, so I wanted to make sure the filter did not do too much to take away from the actual image. To bring the red tint down to a more manageable level, and even out the photo to a place I liked, I added an Exposure layer. On the Exposure layer, I brought the Gamma Correction up to .70. This made the image less orange and brought it to a place I was satisfied with, where there was clearly an enhancing filter on the image, but not so much that the image looked degraded.