before/after, #4

this picture is (clearly) not intended for artistic purposes. it was shot as part of a project i am doing for a client. but i don't post on this site for the photographic content, i post for how i made the content look better ;)

lighting shots in the room i was in (at the boston state house) was extremely difficult. i had my flash in every possible angle; sometimes i would get lucky, sometimes i would end up with shots like this. right off the bat, i needed to balance the light. i lightened up the whole shot with a curves layer, then masked out the top half and blended them together.

the next most important thing, besides the obvious lense distortion, was to bring contrast and color back into the art work. i actually just started with the comic piece and then realized it might look good if i masked in the rest of them, as well.

finally, i had to take the reflections out of 2 of the frames. more than anything, i had to take myself out of the middle one on the left. honestly, i just made a selection around the mattes and painted them in black blending them through. you can probably notice there is still a slight reflection in the upper right corner piece. i didn't want to paint it out entirely so that there's still a sense of the glass frame. otherwise, it would just look like i... literally painted over the glass.