Photography Project: Curation, Quality Control & Finalising Images

 My next step was to curate my images, I needed to find the best 10 images that would be consistent for my Neonate Tarot Collection.  

To curate the images I went through every image and first narrowed this down to around 25 images that were the correct light, did not have any flaws and were composed as I envisioned them for the project.  I wrote the image file numbers for all the images down:

The Fool: 1251/1268

The Star:1278/1268

The Moon: 1291/1290

The Devil: 1321/1320

High Priestess; 1339/1355/1360

Death: 1404/1399/1394/1378

The Lovers: 1425/1415/1451/1455

The Magician: 1464/1474

The Wheel of Fortune: 1522/1508/1505/1523

The Hanged Man: 1503/1564

After narrowing the images ,down I uploaded a set for each card to make a final decision and then I began quality control.  Here is an example of what I did for all images.  

I opened Photoshop and opened the images. I chose the one to work on in this case 'The Star'

I then unlocked and duplicated the background to make a new layer in the layers panel.

I wanted to even out the dark backdrop shade and ensure the bright areas were bright and the dark, dark, so I went to 'Image' in the top menu, then 'Adjustments' and then 'Curves'.

On this panel, I can adjust the image gently and subtly by just moving the line carefully in the dialog box

After this adjustment, I needed to get rid of a small spot of light that had come through in the corner of the image. To do this, I went to the tools panel on the left-hand side and right-clicked on the clone stamp tool.  I then took the tool into the image and pressed Alt and clicked where I wanted to clone from, and then went to the corner and gently clicked over it to clone the black over the error.

The image was now consistent, clean, and the contrast was correct.  I now wanted to make this into a round-sided Tarot Card, so I began by going to to tools panel and clicking on the Rectangle Tool

I then drew the rectangle onto the image.  I went to the tools control in the top menu and used fill and just filled this blue and checked that the stroke was transparent.  I then gently pulled the edge down in one corner to create my curved corners. 

Now I just needed to move the layer over the top of this layer in the layers panel and then I clicked on the layer and in the drop down box clicked on 'Create Clipping Mask'  I now have an image with rounded edges.  

My last stage is to finalise the image.  I have mocked one up in my previous post.  Now I will show this process.  I will now just add the Text layers to create the card. I click on 'T' in the tools panel and then click on the image. In the text tools in the top menu, I change the font to 'Harrington' and Type in the title of the card. I also changed the colour to white. The size of the font is 400pts. This is only because my image was very large, and I did not resize it as I wanted to see the original size while I was adjusting. I will now merge down the image before saving.

The image was now ready to save as a jpeg file in my final images ready for my portfolio on my website.  I click on 'File', 'Save as a Copy', and choose jpeg.  I will also save them as a psd in case I need to go back and adjust again for any reason. 

This is my final image of 'The Star'

I will now follow this process for my other nine images, and they will now be ready for my final portfolio