Welcome to Oz: A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop

Practicing at Practicing: Image Maps

Step 1: Using Image Maps

As an optical sensing device, the human eye scans a scene in a predictable sequence. It first goes to patterns it recognizes, then moves from areas of light to dark, high contrast to low contrast, high sharpness to low sharpness, in focus to blur (which is different than high to low sharpness), and high saturation to low saturation of color.

In order to make the viewer’s eye move across the image in a way that you decide it should, so that the image can be seen in the same way you did, you must manipulate the light and dark areas, their contrast, their sharpness, their degree of focus or blur, and their saturation.

Controlling the variables just mentioned may appear to be a daunting ...