Special effect creation in digital photography

• Main Author: Ng, Lee Hau.
• Other Authors: Jiang Xudong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Computer hardware, software and systems
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45811
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Special effect in digital photography is a broad term, in general, it refers to effect applied to photos or film which able to draw attention and create impact that are seemingly impossible in analogue way. They often used to enhance or modify reality to raise aesthetic merit and to convey information in a more effective and creative way than it would be possible with typical photography. Some effect required proper settings of lighting, equipment, matching with the photographer’s skills. However, with the advancement of digital technology, special effects have becoming easily achievable with software editing tool. Creativity in manipulation of the perspective, lighting, colour display and so on are no longer restricted by the conventional and expensive way of using special lens and particular setting of camera shooting equipment. The current state of art of special effects creation on digital photography has been the most credited with Adobe Photoshop, with hundreds of possible effects created using combinations of layers, blending, brush tools, and so on. However, some effects involve many steps and require steep learning curve to familiarize with the tools and environment. Hence, the author proposed this project with the objective set to develop a software tool in processing digital images to film-like images with special effects which are similar to analogue simulated by use of special lens and darkroom processing. As the term “special” is no longer special when it is used too often, after studying and reviewing the current state of art, particularly Photoshop, and the final selected special effects to be included in the project are: 1.Vignetting, 2.Double Exposure, 3.Fisheye Lens, 4.Selective Colour Desaturation and 5.Bokeh. MATLAB was used as the programming tool in this project. A Graphic User Interface (GUI) was developed as a software simulation which allows users to use simple sliders and mouse pointing interaction modes to perform creative changes to the selected image.