Sh-Sh-Sh-Shake it Up

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For my final visual assignment I chose Switch Up The Mood, worth 2 stars.

Change the mood or tone of a photograph by altering the contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, exposure, etc. You do not have to change all of those things about the photo, but you can if you would like to. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to take it to the extremes, and don’t be afraid to be subtle.

This assignment jumped out to me again because of the featured picture. I also want to work more in GIMP to try to familiarize myself with the software. I expect to be using GIMP to alter images for daily creates in the future so I chose this as another chance to practice.

I like to edit pictures for Instagram as well, and can spend upwards of an hour editing just one picture. I thought this would be a nice assignment to end the week on, because editing photos is relaxing to me. It has also always intrigued me how with simple color changes in a photo how it changes the whole feel of it. I guess put simply, it switches up the mood.

 

The Original Photo

The Mood Switch

 I chose a picture with a neutral mood to it because I wanted to see how different I could make it, and I feel like making a picture of people smiling a different mood is more difficult. In this straight-faced picture I was happy, but my goal was to make the picture seem sad.

I started by importing my photo to GIMP. I first manipulated the color balance of the photo. I chose Colors > Color Balance and proceeded to adjust each color level. I did this for the Midtones and Highights sections. The main effect from this was removing the warmth from my skin, therefore making me seem less happy.

Next, I decreased the Brightness and increased the Contrast to make the overall appearance darker and less lively. Click on Colors > Brightness-Contrast and adjust the slider accordingly.

Finally, go to Colors > Desaturate. I chose the Average option because it gave me my desired “sad” effect.

Then Save your image, and you’re done!

I feel like the mood switches from a photo that emanates warmth and happiness to one that makes you wonder if the subject in the photo is alright.

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A little How-to on switching up the mood

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Here is how to switch up the mood…

Here is a quick and easy way to complete the Switch Up The Mood visual assignment! I used an existing photo I had saved onto my computer just to use as an example, but use any picture you already have or take a new picture of anything to use for this assignment!

I opened up the photo editor Fotor which actually does a variety of things, not only edits photos but you can create collages and slideshows with this editor as well! Anywho, I opened up the editor and chose the picture I wanted to edit and it takes you to this screen:

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Once you arrive at this screen, towards the right hand side of the screen, as you can see there are tons of options on how to edit this photo. I went into the effects section of the editor

 

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And started tooling around with all of the different options, from artistic, to black and white, to lomo, or even the good ole’ classic option, Within each of those options, there are even further in depth options within that category. Below are two example of changing the original photo to an option under black and white and a vintage option.

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You also can change your photo into a little more artsy photo and add a border if you’d like!

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I wouldn’t limit yourself to only what you are comfortable with, but absolutely have fun with this one! Be creative, this is only one option of how to create this assignment, but again don’t limit yourself, I would even experiment with one or two other photo editors to see what final mood changing photos you can come up with! Good luck!

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Messing About with Mood in Image Composites

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Taking another stab at visual assignments, I opted for Switch up the Mood, mostly because I had a few photographs that I had taken with a colleague’s top-shelf digital SLR camera the other day. Consequently, shooting in RAW format, I … Continue reading →

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Switch up the Mood

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  • So far 28 people have completed this assignment.
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  • Submitted by: Annie Belle

Color, lighting, saturation, contrast, and many other factors all play in to taking a decent photo and making it fabulous. This assignment is to change the mood or tone of a photograph by altering the contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, exposure, etc. You do not have to change all of those things about the photo, but you can if you would like to. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to take it to the extremes, and don’t be afraid to be subtle. Familiarize yourself with your editing software, whether it’s Photoshop, GIMP, Picnik, or any number of other editing platforms. Most of all, enjoy what you are doing!

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