[Philbert]

Examples of PS manipulation. Comments on these, and your own manipulations are welcomed.

Shot and modified for a friend.

Before .....

 

.... and after

(click on images to get larger versions)

btw - don't be afraid to hurt my feelings - if you think anything I post sucks, tell me so. Just be prepared to tell me why it sucks!

[sosumi]

Great work! Nice blend on the grass/ocean, good work with the windshield and a perfect clean cut. Did you mask or use the eraser?

[Nobody]

I like the car... and the work too! :)

[Philbert]

Hey, sosumi! Great to see you're still around!

I did all of the masking with the Pen tool and layer masks. (The Pen tool is the ONLY way to get clean, smooth outlines on hard edges, IMO.) The glass is a little tricky - you need to knock it out completely but then add a bit of density to make it look real. (In hindsight, I should have also removed the stickers on the windshield)

The sky and water were created entirely in Photoshop with 3rd party filters. Alien Skin's Xeonfex 2 (little fluffy clouds) and Flaming Pear's Flood. They're two of my favorite plug-ins. The grass edge was created with a blend of existing grass and a custom brush to extend the grass line and give a semi-believable transition. Glad you like it.

Alam -
Can you believe he made that car completely from scratch - the frame, body, everything!

[sosumi]

Hey back atcha Philbert!
I never got the hang of the pen tool, and now I'm so grounded in my ways of doing things it's hard to learn new tricks. I must admit to using various erasers for almost all of my cut-outs.
I tried to post some of my Photoshops earlier, but the html img scr tags weren't working for me - some special trick needed here? I looked at the source and saw yours to be the same as what I had put in, but no joy.
Anyway, here's one of my head swap/colorization 'shops - http://sosumi.blogsp...sing-again.html
tell me what you think!
Here's the B&W source.
http://www.khs64.com/howdy.jpg
Here's some of my favorites -
http://sosumi.blogspot.com/20050601sosumiarchive.html

[macnuke]

my only comment other than it's a great job and way beyond my photochop skills is looking at the gent, the angle of his face is more to the right in the original and looking more at the lens for the chopped shot..did you move him? or the whole thing?thumbs up tho.. great job regardless.

[Philbert]

Great work on the colorizing! What was your method? The knockouts and merging also look excellent.

My only real nitpick is the drop shadow behind George. It look very two dimensional because the shadow wouldn't fall that way. (Compare it to the original shadow behind Howdy.) Also, the lighting on Dick doesn't match the body. The original image is lit with hard light and Cheney's head has soft light. That's not your fault of course but it's a clue (subtle as it is), that the image is modified.

Great job overall though.

The Pen tool is pain to learn but once you do, it becomes very natural. (especially combined with a Wacom tablet) The key to working efficiently with it is learning the keyboard shortcuts. One thing that really helps learning the tool is to turn on the Rubber Band option - it provides visual clues that show where the pen will draw.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm crazy about the HTML formatting options in here. It'd be nice if there were HTML and UBB options. Sometimes I'd rather just type without adding formatting. One odd thing I discovered is that if you edit a post, it no longer adheres to HTML and the Instant UBB Code isn't available. (What's up with that, Mods?) But I think your problem is because it appears Flckr won't allow you to get to the actual image - just a page that shows the image. I could be wrong though - not real familiar with Flickr.

Very observant, macnuke! It's a head from another image. (I only changed the heads) I didn't think the original looked friendly enough. It was an after thought, otherwise I would've just used that image in the first place.

[macnuke]

in real life, one of my jobs is to spot differences in images.
so for me, that was the easy part.
maybe in a hundred years or so, i will be able to chop like you and sosumi.
btw sosumi, looked at your flikr images slideshow... nice work there as well.

[sosumi]

Philbert -You might laugh at the thought of it, but I roughly lassoed all of the sections I wanted the same color, put them on a new layer, played around until I got the color I wanted, then erased around the edges.

I admit, shadows and lighting aren't my strong point, I don't really have an eye for them. Dick's head was another problem - he had that ready for a heart attack any second red hue to his face in the original, so I desaturated it and tried to get the color to match the other skin tones I had on the neck and hands.


macnuke - thanks! The stuff on Flickr is just some stuff I stuck there for storage, I had to go over and look at was there! ;) One of these days, I'll get around to putting up the whole shebang in a gallery somewhere.

[charlieartist]

looks good! One question, though--do you think you could have saved time using an app such as Mask Pro? I have found it to be a good time saver on various projects, usually of a collage type. Have plenty of experience with masks and clipping paths, though, when that doesn't work...

[Philbert]

"One question, though--do you think you could have saved time using an app such as Mask Pro?"

Hi Charlie -

No, I don't think so. It's a bit tedious but I can create a decent path pretty quickly. I've tried most of the third-party masking tools (been a few years though), but frankly, I can do just as good with the tools in Photoshop. A difficult masking job is difficult no matter what you use and I've never found the masking apps to be particularly easier or faster.

Depending on the image, my masking tools consists of the Pen Tool, Channels, Quick Mask or a big soft brush for gradual blending.

[cal_gecko]

cool, but the water and the sky both look 'fake'.. the sky is to bright blue, with no real gradiation in the color of blue (it typically looks darker than that in photos), and something about the water.. perhaps the color.. doesn't look right. Additionally, the shadow of the tree on the ground .. there's no tree in the photo to match it, nor is there anything visible that would cast a shadow on his arm.

[Philbert]

Thanks for your input.

I agree with everything you say except about the shadows. I don't need to see a tree to believe one is there. Branches grow in all directions - I mentally place a tree just out of camera right frame. Of course, had this been something planned instead of a spontaneous snapshot, I would have taken him out of the shadows entirely as they don't do much for the car. Actually, the noonish light overall is horrible. If this had been a paid gig, it would have been much later (or earlier) in the day

But I totally agree, the color and gradation of the sky is way off. Completely my fault as the filter is highly customizeable. (it's pretty amazing actually) I'll have to revisit that.

The largest issue I have with the water is the horizon line. I never could get it to where I was satisfied. It's too straight and perfect.

Maybe avoiding "realism" altogether is the better route?

A bit busy but ...

[dougster]

Nice work -Phil,

Quote

The largest issue I have with the water is the horizon line.

I see the ocean water line almost 'every day', and that issue didn't even enter my mind. The horizon of the ocean is very straight depending where you stand..IMO. And especially from a high view from the cliff pix. I guess you could have placed a little island out there. ;)