Digital Manipulation Introduction

One interesting way to change the way a photograph looks is to digitally manipulate it. There are many ways that you can do this, for example, the most basic way to manipulate a photograph is to add text to it, like some of the examples below. You can also do neat tricks with your photographs like the other examples I have here – making it look like steam is coming out of a coffee cup by combining images of your favorite mug and clouds is one of my favorite tricks. There are some other ways to manipulate images as well, like color splashing and doing a double exposure - which will be covered in future blog posts. To get a digitally manipulated image like the coffee cup example, you want to choose your base image (which would be the clouds) and then you want to add an overlay image (which would be the coffee mug). Then you want to erase any of the excess background image from the coffee cup and line it up to the clouds so that they appear to be steam rising up out of the mug.

Here are my top 2 tips for digitally manipulating an image –

1)      If you are adding text that is not your own quote, make sure to give credit where it is due.

2)      When you are erasing the excess material from your overlay image take it slow and easy! You don’t want to accidentally mess up and have to start over, learn from my mistakes and do it in small sections very slowly until you get it all erased.