Image Manipulation I: Invisible lines

Image Manipulation I : Invisible lines

As hinted at in the previous post, I have tended to keep to myself on the less glamorous work I do. In the present process of opening up and focusing my own narrative towards the future I want, I am learning to stop myself from overthinking and just celebrate the tiny steps geared towards my future along with the big ones, and this specific skill is one that has been quite useful in that sense. So here, I’ll talk a bit about my foray into image editing, a source of posts as unending as my doing it.

Image manipulation can take many forms, from minor edits to very complex fabrications. In some form of it – like the one I am specifically exploring here – the edits have to be essentially untraceable. And therein lies its paradox: when done well, these changes can pass under the radar, and it is ultimately the goal of the exercise. But how to let people know you can do the job? A blog post, perhaps? A video might come in handy, too.

It can take the shape of removing some elements to focus the attention on the main object(s) of a picture, or it can be masking and superposing different video segments to get the right reactions simultaneously.

This is tricky, however, since pointing it out it can run the chance of making it an “obvious” fix; it's like the composite loses a bit of its charm and in the process, flaws are highlighted. For example, seeing the gif on a loop heightens the subtle differences between the frames, hence why the composite is only looped 3 times (in case you missed it). I couldn't look at it go on forever, when it was originally meant to be seen once, in the middle of different shots, a surer way for it to blend in conspicuously.

In the case of the video, doing this definitely brought out other questions, as for example I'm seeing Jasmine's alternate reaction as if for the first time, and don't find it so inappropriate as that. The final video might maybe revert to this through this exercise. Thankfully, the full version of the ad for Foibles is still in the making.

Though these are little examples, one thing is sure: the ability to be able to pull off such edits has pushed me to minimize distraction and/or try to heighten the moment in some images and videos, and I will try to keep copies of the before more consistently from now on, if only to be able to see the evolution of that skill through time.