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DPChallenge Forums >> General Discussion >> 30-Day Self Portraits:the "What We Learned" Thread
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 05/04/2006 10:09:26 AM · #1
In the 30-day self portrait challenge, I have had a lot of fun and produced a few pictures that I actually allow myself to feel proud of. In this thread, I'll outline some of the techniques used and, with any luck, I'll include links to where I ripped off the ideas from.

I hope that anyone who has any ideas will chip in, including those who spot where improvements in any technique can be made.

First of all, I stole Scalvert's idea of keeping a notebook, in which to jot down ideas as they occurred to me or as people suggested them. Some I'll never be able to shoot, while some led to other ideas and reading through the list enabled me to think of minor improvements and means of realising the end product.

Secondly, that quite expensive tripod that I bought 18 months ago that has been collecting dust in the corner has had the busiest time of its life so far. I coupled that with the Canon TC 80 N3 timer remote control, which allowed me to set up the shot and then goof around striking poses while the camera snapped away. It was much, much quicker than using the camera self-timer, as I didn't have to keep going back to the camera after each individual shot.

Thirdly, seeing this tutorial by John Arnold (Floyd, here at DPC), gave me a way of achieving those colours that I've envied for so long. I also downloaded the 'Urban Acid' action from atncentral. The additional 'Muted Colors' layer in this action adds a rather nice effect, too. That is what I used for the frst three photos (April 8th, 9th and 10th). For April 10th, I added a mask to the 'Muted Colors' layer and masked out the eye, to let the colour come through and then dodged the eye on the background layer. This gave the eye its bright colour (my eyes are blue-grey, rather than blue).

Fourthly, layers were my friend and layer masking techniques really made it all very easy. Adding a layer mask to a layer can control what portions of that layer are visible, without having to actually erase anything. When one paints on a layer mask in black, it hides that part of the layer and when one paints in white, it shows that part of the image. So, if one hides too much of a layer, by painting black too vigorously perhaps, that can be undone quite simply by painting white over it again on the mask. Nothing is lost, only hidden, so that the overall effect can be 'tweaked' upon completion.

Fifthly (this list is growing as thoughts come to me), doing cut-outs of someone like me is actually very easy, as I have no hair. In fact, the magic wand and magnetic lasso made some cut-outs dead simple.

April 11th's was quite easy really, given a sturdy tripod and a wide-angle lens. I set up the camera on the tripod in the doorway to our lounge, complete with flash and set focus manually to about five or six feet into the scene and relied on the large depth of field associated with a short focal length. For shooting the various pictures, I set the self-timer on the camera (to ten seconds) and used the remote control to press the shutter button. That way, I could be in front of the camera and be ready to assume my position quite quickly. I had a pile of clothing into which to change after each shot, so that I looked a bit different in each position (although I managed to catch myself wearing the same clothes in a couple of positions). Post-processing was relatively easy. I just opened all the pictures in Photoshop, picked one to be my 'base' layer and copied and pasted each of the other pictures onto it. When one pastes a picture on top of another in Photoshop, it automatically puts it onto another layer. It then became a relatively simple matter of masking away each layer, so that only I was visible. In fact, what I did was to turn off each layer's visibility except the background and the first layer. I then reduced the opacity of the first layer to about 50%, so that I could see the image beneath. I then added a layer mask and painted black onto the mask over the figure in the layer below, allowing it to be seen through the uppermost layer. As the lighting was pretty much the same in each photo, it didn't really matter how much of the rest of the room I left in each layer, as long as I masked away the portion covering the figure on the layer below. After masking, I returned the uppermost layer's opacity to 100% and checked that the lighting did, indeed, match. Where any differences in lighting were evident, I adjusted the brightness and contrast of the layer that did not match. I simply repeated this kind of thing on each additional layer, (turning on its visibility first) having to remember to paint black over the increasing numbers of me appearing in the frame, so that each figure was visible in the finished photo.

I hope that this is intelligible and not too much of a ramble.

Message edited by author 2006-05-26 07:25:15.
 05/04/2006 10:26:39 AM · #2
Thank you so much for this! I really need one of those remotes...the one I have is just a shutter release cable so I can't get more than 3 feet from the camera. :/

You have really been a great inspiration to us during this project. Thanks!!! :)
 05/04/2006 10:27:19 AM · #3
Thanks for the tips! You have a truly inspiring and refreshing collection of work for this project and I've enjoyed watching.
 05/04/2006 11:52:47 AM · #4
Thank you!

I guess my post-processing on that shot wasn't so different from yours, except that I didn't know this:
Originally posted by AJAger:

Fourthly, layers were my friend and layer masking techniques really made it all very easy. Adding a layer mask to a layer can control what portions of that layer are visible, without having to actually erase anything. When one paints on a layer mask in black, it hides that part of the layer and when one paints in white, it shows that part of the image. So, if one hides too much of a layer, by painting black too vigorously perhaps, that can be undone quite simply by painting white over it again on the mask. Nothing is lost, only hidden, so that the overall effect can be 'tweaked' upon completion.


So I just used the Erase tool and if I messed up I'd try "Erase to History". Something went wrong somewhere along the line and I felt the need to start all over, and I went back to the program I first learned to use for graphics design stuff, which was the 1998 edition of Paint Shop Pro. Because I am all cutting-edge that way.

I don't know if I have any tips from my 30 days that anyone else wouldn't already know, but I will be following this thread with much interest.
 05/04/2006 11:55:21 AM · #5
April 12th was pretty easy, apart from having to wait ages for the tunnel to empty of people. This was quite early in the morning, heaven knows how busy it would have been later. This was the sealion pool at Colchester Zoo. Unfortunately no sealions in the shot. A small dose of liquify filter used on this to shrink the fat neck.

April 13th was not too difficult, in actual fact. I set up the camera on tripod outside the back door and took a shot of my pair of boots. I then carefully, in turn, marked the position of the toe of each boot and threw it aside and put my foot in the same place. I then took the shot of my lower legs. In this way, the whole business of matching the lighting was reduced to a pretty trivial affair. On the computer, I opened the picture of the lower legs, then copied and pasted the photo of the boots onto a new layer, so that I had the lower legs as the background layer and the boots as Layer 1. I reduced the opacity of the boots layer, so that I could see both images and see what had to be done to effect the blending. It became obvious at that step that the necks of the boots were considerably wider than my calves. The liquify filter came in useful here, too. I shrunk the tops of the boots inwards and flared my calves. As I was trying to get an item on one layer to match an item on another, it meant a bit of to-ing and fro-ing to get it right. Once the calves and the tops of the boots were about the same size, blending could begin in earnest. I added a layer mask to the boots layer and started painting in black on the mask, so as to 'erase' the majority of the boots. It really now became a fairly simple mechanical task of painting around the eyelets, laces and stitching. Sometimes, working with a brush of one pixel at a viewing size of 400%. Another tip that I picked up from John Arnold is to use the left and right square bracket keys to decrease and increase brush size - it's much quicker than moving the mouse up to the top of the screen. Zooming the view in and out using Command plus and minus makes it easy to see how a detail sits with the rest of the image. I had to clone in a section of bootlace on the right, as the boots are wider than my feet and the lace was tucked behind the boot, so the lace appeared to end abruptly about an inch away from my foot.


05/04/2006 12:06:14 PM · #6
On my Day 3 portrait i did a technique i learned on the web,
instead of using gaussian blur to make my skin smooth,
i used the smudg tool, i zoomed in probably 150% and did little circles to blur out the skin and creat a really smooth face, i did it a little fast but if you take your time it can really creat a hard photo with good skin
you can compare my day 2 to my day 3, in day 2 i did the gaussian blure style to make my skin smooth
 05/04/2006 12:57:20 PM · #7
Very useful thread, thanks! I'll write something about the techniques I used when I have more time for it.

Message edited by author 2006-05-04 13:00:37.
 05/04/2006 03:29:09 PM · #8
April 14th and April 15th were not too difficult or time-consuming. Just setting up the camera on tripod with timer remote and moving around posing. Used the 'Urban Acid' filter on the 14th, along with a bit of dodging and burning on the concrete. Just added a slight vignette to the 15th. The majority of the darkness around the edges is because I was standing inside our front porch.

April 16th was a bit of a win-win situation. In order to get the lighting matching between the 'fridge and my head, I emptied out the 'fridge and got into it. My wife allowed me to do this, on the grounds that, as I emptied out the 'fridge, I clean it. I got the shot that I wanted and she got a clean 'fridge. I took a shot of the 'fridge with the door open and another shot (actually a series of shots) of the empty 'fridge with me in it. I then selected the best shot of me in the 'fridge and set about layering. I adjusted the hue/saturation on the 'head' layer, in order to get the 'just refrigerated' look and painted the shadows in on the underside of the frosted glass shelf. This I did on two more layers. First I painted in an ellipse to represent the underside of the neck and then I painted in the two segments at each side of the ellipse to represent the neck. I blurred these layers slightly and fiddled with the opacities until they looked right. The simple part was getting the head into the 'fridge, the hard part was painting the shadows, although using layers made it easier to fiddle with it.
 05/04/2006 04:26:27 PM · #9
thanks so much, aj. these are great tips, especially for someone who bought photoshop a month ago!
 05/04/2006 05:42:29 PM · #10
ok, i went to the site with the downloads, and decided to try one. i downloaded it, opened it - which went straight to p.s., and....where is it????

figured it out. new results on a completely unsuitable image on my 30 SP site...

Message edited by author 2006-05-04 22:12:12.
 05/04/2006 05:43:55 PM · #11
AJ, you're my hero!
 05/05/2006 01:16:29 PM · #12
April 17th was the result of layering five different photographs: me sitting at the table, my face on the left, my face on the right and two shots of the stands (this is actually a holder for kitchen towel). The shot of me sitting at the table was straight forward enough. I just eliminated the reflection of my face in the mirror using the patch tool. The other two faces were shots of me sitting on the table. Again, as I had shot in situ, it was easy to match lighting etc. In turn, I laid these shots over the picture of me sitting at the table and reduced the opacity, so that I could see both layers. Then I moved the topmost layer (the one that would eventually be just a face 'mask') downwards, until it was in the best position, added a layer mask and masked away everything but the portion of the face that I wanted and then restored opacity. I had to shoot the stands separately, as I only had one of them. The pictures of these were overlaid and the layers moved to below those of the faces, so that they disappeared neatly behind them. I then masked away the lower portion of the one on the right of the frame, so as to make it disappear behind my shoulder. The final part was adding the shadows. For this, I created a new empty layer and painted black on it roughly where I thought the shadows should be, using a very soft-edged brush. I made sure that this layer was beneath those layers containing the face 'masks' and the stands. The shadows were obviously too black, so I reduced the layer opacity until it looked right. Adding a layer mask allowed me to tweak the shape of the shadows until they looked just about right, painting black on the mask to hide portions of the shadow and painting white to show them again. The hardest part, I found, about doing this was getting the shapes right for the faces on the stands. I spent quite a bit of time tweaking the masks for these.
 05/06/2006 05:15:43 PM · #13
thank you thank you thank you aj. this is a wonderful series of tutorials. i'm reading them, printing them,and hope to use the stuff inthem soo. thanks for taking the time to write these out.
 05/06/2006 05:18:59 PM · #14
AJ's stuff is awesome! xianart I used one of his techniques for this image

05/08/2006 12:36:04 PM · #15
April 18th was a very simple one. I set up the camera on its tripod on a mezzanine floor in our industrial unit and set up the timer remote. I just then scooted down the ladder and struck various poses while the camera snapped away. Post-processing was mainly the Urban Acid action again. The vignette was a new layer filled with black, placed on top of all the other layers. The centre portion of the black layer was erased with a very soft-edged brush and the opacity lowered until it looked right.

April 19th was an attempt at a retread of an old Fujimugs challenge entry, which was done in one shot (OK, one set of multiple exposures on a Fuji S602) and the only post-processing was a resize for the web. For the self-portrait, I again set up the camera on the tripod and armed the timer remote. I just sat in a chair turning my head from side to side while the camera snapped away merrily on its own. I looked at the pictures I got and selected the three that I wanted to use (one looking left, one looking ahead and one looking right). I then opened these three in Photoshop, picked one (the looking ahead one) to be the base shot and then copied the other two and pasted them in as new layers. Again, making sure that the lighting in each of the shots was pretty much the same was the key to making the post-processing simple.

For each of the faces looking outwards, I lowered the opacity, so that I could see both the topmost layer and the background layer and then moved the topmost layer until the eyes lined up as I wanted. I then raised the opacity to 100% and added a layer mask to the topmost layer. I then simply masked away the right-hand portion of the leftmost face and the left-hand portion of the rightmost face. Again, using layer masks, the amount masked away could be fiddled with until a desirable effect was achieved. A large, soft-edged brush used to paint the mask really helped the images to blend together.

Finally, when I realised that I could not get it to look any better, the image was flattened and converted to black and white using the channel mixer (using more blue channel than red channel caused the texture to pop out).

I'd actually just had a shave, especially for this shot and you can see at the top of my head where my scalp has gone a bit flaky and dried up. I should have used some moisturiser or a decent clone brush.
 05/08/2006 10:11:57 PM · #16
well guys, I won't even go into what I did, since most of the time I was scrambling just to get ANYTHING up. I hope I got a passing c+ _ I was just glad to finish. This was as much an excersize on commitment as it was photo challenge. Loved it!
My kids still ask how you made those boots.
 05/09/2006 03:47:47 PM · #17
April 20th was very simple, albeit somewhat time-consuming. I got the base shots by just pointing the camera, at arm's length, at various parts of my body. I started at my feet and worked upwards, making sure that I changed clothes as appropriate, so that not too many of the frames matched too closely. In Photoshop, I added a frame to each shot using an action I had previously downloaded from atncentral but never used (it'll be found in the 'Frames and Mattes' section). The specific action that I used was the 'foreground colour frame', using white as a foreground colour. For ease of editing, I downsized each image before compositing, so that the final file size was somewhere near manageable. Finally, I created a new document in Photoshop with a white background and pasted all the pictures in and moved them around until they looked right together.

April 21st involved little trickery at all. I set up a white background in my kitchen (the only room in the house with enough space) and set the camera on the tripod with the ubiquitous timer remote. I then danced around naked until the camera stopped snapping away. After some brightness/contrast and levels editing, there was a bit of mucking around to get the triptych together neatly. First, I overlaid in one document the three shots that I had selected to use. I changed the opacities of the top two layers, so that I could see all three layers and then moved these layers around, so that my head was roughly in the same position in each shot and then cropped the document. I then copied each layer into its own new document and used the 'foregound colour frame' action, using black as the foreground colour. Finally, I created a new document three times as wide as each photo and pasted each photo into it and moved them around into their respective final positions.

April 22nd was really quite simple, although not exactly as I originally intended. The look that I had originally envisaged was a sort of " Scooby Doo hiding from the janitor in the ghost costume" thing, which involved standing in a corner with a large lampshade on my head. I couldn't find a lampshade, so, while casting around for something else, found the wicker wastebasket. Once I'd found that, the suit and tie just had to be donned and the shades were the ideal embellishment. This was just a shot in our lounge on a Saturday morning while the family were out. Post-processing was limited to the 'Urban Acid' action.
 05/13/2006 09:24:43 AM · #18
April 23rd consisted of three shots, each taken against a light background. In the first one, I wore my favourite Motorhead T-shirt as a blind fold, in the second, I wore the ear defenders that I usually wear when I'm being nagged and in the third, I kept my lips as tightly pursed as possible, so that the zip that I was going to overlay would fit in better. In post processing of each individual image, I duplicated the background layer, so that I could mask away to my heart's content and selected the light background behind my head using the magic wand tool. After inverting the selection, clicking on the 'add layer mask' icon in the layers palette erased the background behind me rather neatly. I found a picture of a zip on the internet and pasted it as a new layer over the photo of me with my lips pursed. Using 'Transform' and 'Liquify', it was possible to get it to match the line of my lips. This part was made easier by lowering the opacity of the zip layer, so that I could see the layer below. Then a layer mask was added to the zip layer and the cloth portion of the zip erased by painting black onto the mask, leaving only the teeth. Each of the three base images were flattened and the canvas size of one of the images increased, so as to provide room to drop the other two images into. These other two images were then each copied and pasted in as new layers and moved around until in the final alignment. A new layer was created behind all the other layers and filled with white to provide the backdrop.

April 24th was a quick shot taken at arm's length using the 50mm lens wide open. Post processing consisted of the Urban Acid action, a slight vignette and dodging of the whites of the eyes.

April 25th was rather a retread, processing-wise, of earlier efforts. I moved our kitchen furniture around to get some space and set up the camera on a tripod with the timer remote and took a number of shots of me 'juggling' and an even greater number of shots with me with my head in various positions, trying to guess where it would be were it actually being juggled. This involved much contortion and standing on chairs. The most time-consuming part was selecting the four most suitable shots with which to make the composite image. This was done by overlaying various shots and playing with opacities, so that I could get an idea of how well they went together. Once these were selected, I used the picture of me 'juggling' as the background layer and copied and pasted the pictures from which I was going to use the heads as new layers. For each of these 'head' layers, a layer mask was added and all of the mask painted in black, except for the head. Once all the masking was complete, a new layer was added and the shadows of the heads were painted in in black. These shadows were then blurred and the layer opacity lowered until it all looked right, or at least as right as I could get it.

Edit: forgot to mention that it was inspired by this:



Message edited by author 2006-05-13 15:12:11.
 05/20/2006 01:28:53 AM · #19
April 26th was really simple.The base photo was one of me against a plain wall. In Photoshop, I duplicated the background layer and hid it, so that I was working on the duplicate layer and used the magic wand tool to select the wall behind me. I then inverted the selection and added a layer mask by clicking the icon in the layers palette. I then added a new layer beneath the picture of me and tried a few garish gradients until I found one that looked really harsh. The shatter effect was created using the demo version of Xenofex 2.

April 27th was another really easy one to do. I took the base picture against a plain background, as I wanted there to be no real amount of detail there. I used a single camera-mounted flash straight-on, to provide some harsh shadows to the side of me, as I knew that the processing would bring these out. The processing of the 'graffiti' was carried out in roughly the same manner as this, except that I kept the background layer hidden, as I wanted a more stark look to the outline. A bit of playing with the image size was necessary before the bricks could be added, as the texturiser can only produce them up to a certain size, so, with the brick size set to maximum, I went back and forth a few times, gradually reducing the main picture size until the bricks were large enough. I went looking for a shot of a street scene on the internet and found this one, which looked pretty fit for purpose, so I added it in as a new layer, transformed it until it was large enough, added a layer mask and erased around the heads. I had to clone in a little bit of pavement on the left.

April 28th was one that I'd been wanting to do for some time, it was just that the weather had not been cooperating. When I spotted my chance, I went for it. This was a shot taken at arm's length with the camera set in Manual and (slightly under-) exposed for the sky and with the flash compensation set up a bit. No real post processing, other than levels. (Oh, yeah and a bit of Liquify in a bid to hide my double chin).

April 29th was taken in an office building in Canary Wharf, while we were waiting to commence work. I was looking for some sort of industrial setting this day and spotted the crack in the wall, which I figured would make for a pretty decent framing effect. The shot was taken with camera on tripod with flash bounced of the (quite high) ceiling. Post processing was the Urban Acid filter (available here), some burning on the grubby patches on the blocks of the wall and the addition of a vignette.
 05/20/2006 02:44:06 AM · #20
This is simply an amazing thread. Wow.

I couldn't even begin to duplicate what you've done here... all my days would be.. "and, uh.. I had no idea what I was doing here, but I did it anyway".

If I could put this thread in a "memory" bank or save it somehow, I totally would. I'll have to put it on "watch" for now
 05/20/2006 02:47:57 AM · #21
Great post and awesome collection, AJ!

What I learned is that I could only get to 29.

...and then I died. :(
 05/20/2006 03:11:23 AM · #22
Fascinating thread!! I can't wait to hear how you did your April 30th. Mind boggling!
 05/20/2006 02:53:04 PM · #23
April 30th took me rather a long time to achieve. It was rather obviously inspired by (in other words, I stole the idea from) M. C. Escher's Bond of Union.

This was the base shot. Taken at arm's length against our kitchen wall, which is vaguely yellow. I tried pretty hard to get the right angle.



In photoshop, the first thing was to erase the background and rotate slightly, so it looked a bit like the guy in the original picture. (NB the white background here is a function of saving as a jpeg. In photoshop, all that is visible around the head is the checkerboard pattern.) Erasing the wall behind me was achieved in the usual way: duplicate the background and apply a layer mask to the duplicated layer, after using the magic wand tool to select the uniformly-coloured wall and inverting the selection. To reiterate, it was really very easy, as I have no hair to try to cut around.



The next step was to desaturate the main image and continue painting in black on the layer mask until suitable portions of the image had been hidden, commensurate with the 'unwrapping' effect desired. A layer filled with black was placed behind the head layer. It was at this stage that the overall effect could easily be seen.



The next step was to paint in to the image those portions of the inside of the head that would be visible between the 'bands'. This was achieved by painting on a new layer. The colour for this was selected using the eyedropper tool, just picking a shade that looked right. The method that I used for this was to paint slightly more than what I wanted and then apply a layer mask and actually mask away parts of what I'd just painted until it looked right. The advantage of this approach, I feel, is that if one paints too much in the first place, it can be dealt with simply and it allows one to fine-tune the piece quite easily.



The image still looked a little 'flat' at this stage, so it was necessary to paint over some of the edges, so as to give some sense of depth to the surfaces. I painted along the top edges in white. This was done on a new layer, with no particular care given to the painting in the first place, as I used a layer mask to fine-tune again.



The other edges were then painted along in the same way, on a new layer. The shade for this was chosen again using the eyedropper tool. Fine-tuning was done using a layer mask, so that this edging overlapped the white edging. Where the dark edging met the white edging, the transition was a little harsh. Here's where the power of layer masks really became evident. To soften this transition, all I had to do was to blur the masks in the transition areas using the blur tool.



With the edging done, it looked better, yet still a little flat. I painted shadows in on the inside of the head by painting in solid black. Again, I did this on a new layer and painted over a too-large area and fine-tuned using a layer mask. Finally, I lowered opacity and blurred the mask to make it all look almost right.



Now the main part of the image was complete. All that remained now was to add the bubbles as per the original picture. I found this tutorial and used it to create bubbles. I just played around until they looked right and pasted one each on a new layer and repositioned and resized it until it looked right. This sounds easy, although I ended up with so many layers that I almost lost track. For the bubble that appears behind the top of my head, I just moved the layer in the layers palette until it was between the solid black layer and the layer on which my head was.

It all sounds so very simple, but it took me four and a half hours from start to finish.

edit: missed a step. D'oh!

Message edited by author 2006-05-20 14:59:42.
 05/20/2006 03:04:04 PM · #24
Doesn't sound simple at all.....fantastic results, and a great tutorial thanks!
05/26/2006 07:16:44 AM · #25
May 1st was inspired by Pedro's shot, "Disturbed".



Instead of fishing line, I found a jumbo-sized box of rubber bands and proceeded to wrap them around my head. By the time they were all in place, it was somewhat hard to breathe and my vision was completely blurred. The camera was already on a tripod with flash and remote control connected. All I had to do was sit down in front of it and press the button on the remote. It was shot against our ktchen wall, which is an off-white colour (I'm sure it was probably actually white at some time in the past), so was easy to select with the magic wand and lighten. The hardest part about this shot was getting the rubber bands off afterwards, as I was desperate to get rid of them and they had all become knotted.

May 2nd was another shot involving a little discomfort. With my clothes on backwards, I set out to get a sort of surreal "waving goodbye as I go to work" kind of picture. I never realised just how tight the collar of a shirt could be when it's on back-to-front. It involved a little pinning and tucking. Post-processing included erasing my toes that could still be seen, running the Urban Acid action (again) and replacing the rather bland colour of the sky with the strange shade of blue. A mask was added to the muted colours layer produced by the action and the area over the flowers was painted in black, to let the colours show. Finally a bit of burning on the block paving to make the pattern stand out a little more.

May 3rd was composed of two shots, as I don't normally let people crack open my head with eggspoons. With the camera set up on the tripod, I took a photo of the eggcup on the coffee table in the lounge, with the spoon above it. I then moved the table away and zoomed out a little, sat down in front of the camera and took a couple of shots of me flinching. Work started with the photo of the table and eggcup and the first thing I did was to duplicate the background layer. I then noticed that the background of the picture (which is, in fact, our sofa) was not blurred quite enough. Simply blurring the blue area would not work, as the amount of blurring required would cause the colours of the sofa, the table and the eggcup to get mixed. To get around this, I simply duplicated the layer and roughly cloned areas of blue over the table and the eggcup. Blurring then gave a nice blurry blue portion. To fit this into the picture properly, I added a layer mask and painted black over the table, eggcup and the spoon. I then opened the picture of the head, selected all, copied and pasted it into the picture of the table and eggcup (a new layer is automatically created). I added a layer mask to this and painted around my head in black, until only my head was left. Once I was happy with this, I dragged the layer mask to the small trash icon in the layers palette. The reason for this is that dragging a layer around does not seem to automatically drag the layer mask with it. A dialogue box comes up when one does this and asks whether to apply the layer mask before deleting it. I selected 'OK', so that only the head remained on the layer. Now I could move the layer around and transform the size of the head until it fitted well with the eggcup. At this stage, a new layer mask was added, so that I could fine-tune the lower edge of the head and make it follow the line of the rim of the eggcup. Finally on this layer, I selected the bottom edge of the head using the lasso tool, selected the layer mask and added a slight blur. The spoon, however, looked to just be hovering in space, so I duplicated the original picture of the table and eggcup, added a layer mask and painted black over every part of the layer except the spoon. Adding motion blur to the spoon meant that the blurred parts went outside the mask, so the effect didn't work, so I dragged the layer mask to the trash icon, selected 'OK' as before and was left with a layer with just the spoon on it. A motion blur was added to this layer and the picture was complete.

Edit: forgot to mention that I added another layer and painted black on it where I thought a shadow should go and then lowered the opacity until it looked about right.

Message edited by author 2006-05-26 07:24:30.
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