Editing process of Waiting at the Stop

Original photo

As always, I started with duplicating the original layer

I didn't like the big space on the upper half of the photo and I wanted to concentrate on the people in the photo so I cropped the photo using the cropping tool.

After cropping the photo, I wanted to select around the subjects and as I was not selecting simple rectangular shapes, I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool which I felt was effective for this job.

After selecting, I saved the selection in case I was going to use it again. Because I wanted to select the background instead of the people, I inverted the selection so the background was selected.

I wanted to desaturate the background to decrease the colour in the photo to emphasise the significance of the people in the photo whilst adding to the depressed tone that I was going for.

After desaturating the background, I wanted to tone down the vibrance of the photo as a whole. To do this, I deselected my selection then I went to Image > Adjustments > Vibrance and brought the vibrance value down to -40. I also desaturated the photo a little to enhance the neutral colours showing more definition.

To give a depressed looking atmosphere in the photo, I added a photo filter by going to image adjustments. I chose the cooling filter as the colour of the blue has annotations of coldness and depression.

After adding the photo filter, I felt the photo wasn't dark enough so I decreased the brightness of the photo and increased the contrast a little.

Here is the finished product.