Sand Paintings and Photoshop

I posted earlier about playing with Photoshop. I'm still at it!
I have continued with my series, Patterns in the Sand on ArtID & find that the sand pictures in particular have provided an opportunity for fun and exploration.


While I have chosen to keep them in their sandy colors and to use Photoshop only as an aid in enhancing the contrast to make the pictures stand out more, the fact that they are primarily patterns means that I try other colors and combinations as well. "Elegance" looks best sandy, I think, but I also like the blue-and-white patterned version.

Extreme Photoshop

The trouble with extreme photoshop edits is that they are just so much fun.

Still Playing with Photoshop

Some more moody trees, again just because.

Just Because

Two more moods for the palm trees:

Photoshop

I have long standing love/hate relationship with Photoshop, one that has only deepened as I've taken the photography class this semester.

Consider the following pictures--or rather picture. The first has not been photoshopped at all--it's what came out of the camera. One is pretty much "normally" photoshopped, that is, the color and levels have been tweaked a bit to bring out what is there, but nothing has really been altered--it looks like what I saw and fairly faithfully reproduces a pleasant evening in the park.

The second has been far more drastically altered. It's now a somewhat psychedelic sunset, no longer peaceful, and no longer much like the evening on which I took it. It's fun, but where does it fall on the scale of things? Does it even qualify as a photo any more or is it something else ("digital art," a term I'll figure out one of these days)? Or does that take more drastic changes still? Is it "Art" or just scribbling with crayons (metaphorically speaking)? I had fun making it, but it definitely no longer reflects "what was really there."

Added to that, of course, is the whole printer-computer relationship: When printed, none of these will look quite like what they do on screen, which means I'll probably have to tweak some more.