Building A Chop – Theo Things A Dueth 1

This tutorial shows how to combine two images into one. Plus it’s a great practice of all the different techniques we’ve learned so far. Below are the images we will use.

Syesha.jpg

Theo.jpg

Open both images in Photoshop. Press V to select the Move Tool.

(Win: CTRL / Mac: CMD)

Drag Theo into Syesha. Zoom out and resize Theo by pressing CTRL-T. Drag the upper right anchor point while holding the SHIFT key to reduce proportianlly.

Watch carefully and stop when you think he and Syesha are proportional.

At this point you will notice that if we move Theo to the left edge there isn’t enough room to show him. So we will make the canvas bigger using the CROP tool.

First, move the resized Theo in the middle of the document. Select the CROP Tool (Press C).

Drag the tool along the whole document then drag the left anchor point more to the left as shown below.

Hit the ENTER/RETURN key to crop the image bigger.

Reposition Theo by aligning the top of his piano to the top of Syesha’s piano (below).

Zoom (CTRL-SPACE-Drag the mouse) into Theo and put a path around him with the Pen Tool (Press P).

Since the background is dark we don’t have to be so exact on the clipping path.

Make the path into a selection (check previous tutorials).

Invert the selection by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-I. Press delete to remove the background on Theo. Press CTRL-D to deselect.

Select the Marquee Tool (Press M) and dragging the mouse from the upper right of our document, make a selection as shown below.

Then go to the Background layer and copy the selection to a new layer (CTRL-J).

Go to EDIT>TRANSFORM>FLIP HORIZONTAL to flip the layer. Move it all the way to the left until the left edge of the layer snaps to the left edge of the document.

At this point let’s see what we need to fix:

1. The pianos have different colors. We need to make a smooth transition in the obvious seam.

2. Same with the background as number 1.

3. We need to get rid of the person (duplicated) in this background.

4. Theo doesn’t have enough image – he’s cut off at the waist.

To Be Continued…

You can try and figure out how to fix all four points. Answers will be in the next blog post.

Cease and Desist: Stamp out Logos, Watermarks and Text

The stamp tool basically copies a portion on an image and paints it over an area you choose to assign. In this example, we will take out the infamous logo. I will clone the image that is on top of the logo to cover it.

TIP: Always create a new layer above the original image and set the Stamp Option to ‘SAMPLE ALL LAYERS’

1. Select the Stamp Tool (press S)

1a. Select a brush size (for this example a medium size [20 above] one will do) and set the Hardness to 0%
2. Hold the ALT key, crosshairs will appear.

3. Position the crosshairs on the part of the image you want to clone. I always select an area where it would be easier to begin stamping on the new area. In this case, the edge where the wall ends and the sparkly hanging things begin.

4. Once you decided on what to clone. Press the mouse button to select the area.

5. Hold the ALT key and position the crosshairs to a part over the logo that will match the area we selected (edge of the wall and sparkly thingies).

6. Release the ALT key and start painting away.

TIP: It will be better to stamp over an image in one continuous stroke as much as possible. So choose an area wide enough to clone. Keep in mind, these will be on a separate layers so you can undo and delete anything you’re not happy with.

Watch for patterns to clone over in the image that you can use to cover any unwanted element out. Sometimes you might have to repeat the above steps if the area isn’t enough to cover part of the image. If there are a lot of details in the area you’re cloning, a smaller brush size might be best.