Yesterday’s Shoes VI

Yesterday’s Shoes.

I went back to the beginning, opened the original header, duplicated the background as a new layer, changed the Hue toward yellow, used the Cutout filter, and erased with a large airbrush tip to get some of the original color on the toe and the corners of the frame.  Then I opened a pic of Chief Wahoo the Cleveland Indians’ logo and copy/pasted it into the middle of the shoes.  I erased away everything but the face, and grinned.

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Yesterday’s Shoes V

Yesterday’s Shoes.

The brown creatures and halo are imported from ebay.  That is two views of a hand-carved netsuke that I bought and had sent to Miami from China.

In Photoshop, I started by using a filter called Cutout to make the background look paint-by-numberish.  It is in the Artistic tab, and it is one of my favorites.  Then I opened the wooden rats sitting on a mushroom, selected all, copied, and pasted into the header.  I lowered the opacity on the new layer and erased all the excess background from the photographs of the netsuke.  I returned the layer to 100% opacity and moved it to the appropriate place on the image.  I added some contrast and some saturation for pop, then I right clicked on the layer with the mice and duplicated it.  I moved the new layer with the cursor to the right side and flipped it with the Transform function.  Then I moved it some more.

The halo is the underside of the carving.  I copy/pasted, erased excess, and placed it properly.

One note about sharpness.  If you want to increase detail and make the image more well defined, use UNsharp Mask.  That’s right, the “Sharpen” functions don’t work the way they sound.  Use “Unsharp Mask”, usually 60/2 or 100/1 for settings.  I use it almost every time.

Yesterday’s Shoes IV

Yesterday’s Shoes.

There have been a few hits directed here by search engines from people wanting to use Photoshop to put different heads on certain bodies.  Today we will start to understand that process.

Before we get to that, I used a filter called Poster Edges on the shoes.  I am a contrast fanatic, and I like that one a whole lot.  It puts the black shadows into details of the image.  With all Photoshop filters, you can toy with the settings.  I usually max things out… or use magick numbers.

Then I transplanted the Ghost Rider into the body of the banner.

The drawing of Johhny Blaze is by Randy Kintz.  Nina painted it by hand in the colours of a Wild Sentinel.  More about that here: http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/vs/en/news/article.aspx?aid=2911

When you want to add one image to another, like transplanting a face onto a chosen body, you open both files in Photoshop.  Select the face, either by Select All or by using one of the lasso tools or the magic wand.  Edit: Copy.  Edit: Paste.  Choose the arrow/cursor tool and drag the face from it’s window into the body picture.  You can drop it anywhere on the body and move it after you see where it lands.  The face will need to be sized, if it is way too big you will need to make the original smaller.  Usually you can just use the Transform: Scale function to drag it down to size by the corners. 

When you drag one image into another, it pastes as a new layer.  You can lower the opacity of that layer to see through to the image underneath.  Use the Eraser tool to clean up the edges, then return the opacity to 100%.  That’s the basics.

One time I transplanted my face, along with the visage of Matt Hyra The Designer Who Gave Us The Toys For War Paint, into a photograph of two dudes with Liz Sherman.  You can see that here: http://metagame.com/vs.aspx?tabid=46&ArticleId=7893

I hope you enjoyed today’s lesson and yesterday’s shoes.  If you have any questions about the process, feel free to ask in the Comment section of this post.  This image may be a bit too loud, I tend to overdo things in my quest for visual assault.  I should be able to calm it down a bit in the coming days.

Yesterday’s Shoes III

Yesterday’s shoes.

The exploding blocks are a Photoshop filter called Extrude.  You can find it in the Filter menu, inside the Stylize menu.  Personally, I like to make the blocks small and long like that, those are 6 size, 60 deep, level-based.  I duplicated the layer and erased back down to the Plastic Wrap effect on the left shoe and in the middle.

Starting today, I will add a bit of critique to the process.  There is a dark line that runs straight across the image horizontally.  It should have been taken out somehow.  If I were to fix it, I would zoom in and paint the pixels to match the colors beside them.  There is an eyedropper tool in Photoshop that allows you to pick any color in the image by clicking on an area.  I would pick the color above or below the dark line and then fill the line areas with the paint bucket tool, or tap a few colors into the dark line with the paintbrush tool.  Alternatively, for a quicker easier fix, the smudge tool could be used close up to smear the line into the areas above and below it.

Yesterday’s Shoes II

Yesterday’s Shoes.

That was the second day of this ride, and the smoky swirls are created with a Photoshop filter called “Plastic Wrap”.  It can be found in the “Artistic” tab within the “Filter” tab. 

Before you do anything with filters on an image, you should duplicate the layer you are working on.  That way you can use the eraser to bring details back up to the top if you need to.  In this case, the eyeball/soul spot/cherry toe on the shoes got covered up a bit by the smoky plastic wrap and I needed to erase through the top layer to show it again.

Enjoy today’s change of shoes, I will see you back here tommorrow for the tricks that made it pop.

Yesterday’s Shoes: The Project.

Yesterday’s Shoes. 

I will be changing the header on this blog quite often, using Photoshop to alter the image slightly.  Then I will tell you how I did it.  First days first.

I painted the shoes with Liquitex soft-body acrylics.  They are sitting on a maroon pillow on the gold couch.  They are Reebok Classics.  I used the “Liquify” function to swell the toes slightly in the first image, since it distorted a bit when I stretched it to 770 by 200 pixels to fit.  Next time I will explain the smoky swirls that are in today’s header.  After a year of this, with at least 300 incarnations, I will print out each header and glue them all together into a giant strip of trippy eye candy.  Like taffy.