PROCESSING IMAGES:

MAKING MOUNTAINS

Processing images: One of the most powerful aspects of an image processing application is the use of filters to transform the original image into something quite different. Most phpto processing applications have numerous filters. The example included on this page uses some filters selected from Photoshop Elements. Explore different filters and post about 8-10 of them, describing the filter effect and what you like about the effect on the image. An excellent on-line image processor is FotoFlexer. Try it out!

Filtering Mountains

Searching for mountain images, a large image that had a resolution of 300 dpi was found and put in a folder titled "mountains". Using Photoshop Elements, the image was cropped and reduced to 72 dpi. The image had a long name with spaces, so the name of the image was changed to simply "mountains.jpg".

mountains.jpg

Then, making sure the color image was in rgb mode, the image was processed or edited by using filters. One of the first filter used was "fresco." This gave a painterly effect that turned the image into the quality of a painted landscape.

Fresco Filter

After that, I returned to the original (which I can do by using undo or using the history palette to go the previous step). I tried a similar, but more dramatic effect which was called "sumi." This evoked an eastern quality, sketch-like and some what simpler,  making three distinct planes of sky, foreground, and distant mountains. It seemed more peaceful than the original.

Sumi Filter

Solarizing the image produced a darkening effect, much more complex and mysterious. The effect is also a painted effect with much more detail.

Solarize Filter

Some of the other filters distort the image, but you have a lot of control. I especially like liquify where you can actually recreate the image with dramatic changes in the formal elements. The changes I made still retained the original form, but I could change the skyline and reshape the terrain.

Liquify Filter

Although I tried many more filters, the final one I would like to share was the twirl filter. I really like the effect produced here, transforming the mountains into a sunami wave!

Twirl Filter