Fun with Photo shop

When we went to Madame Tussauds wax museum , Prithvi was all in dreams about taking a picture with his favourite hero ‘Spider man’. He has seen the picture of Sathish with Spiderman. But to his disappointment and to our trouble, ‘Spider man’ was missing. It was a tough task for us to convince him and to go around the museum. So, I promised him that I will get that picture of him with his hero, without any clue of how I can do it.

Luckily, Sathish had installed latest and Original version of Adobe Photoshop (PS) in our laptop, which came to my rescue. It was amazing to see the numerous features of PS . Anything and everything you want with pictures can be done using PS, provided you have the patience and interest.

Now on to our Spiderman picture… I am only giving you an overview and not a step by step instruction, so that you will explore more :-)

• I took Sathish’s photo with Spider man as the base.

• I took an existing suitable photo of Prithvi.

• Now comes the challenge. Extracting Prithvi alone from the current background. There are number of techniques for extraction.

a. Lasso tool : This comes in handy to select only a particular object. So I selected Prithvi alone. Don't worry about the extra outer area selected. You can use the 'Magic wand tool' to delete the extra and get the accurate selection.

b. 'Quick Selection tool' could be used for selecting an area. But it does not work out properly for extracting a person.

c. Better than the above, I like the ‘Magic extractor’ , which is easy and more accurate. In the menu bar, select Image -> Magic extractor. It is easy to follow the instructions for selecting and deselecting and extract the image.

· Now we have 2 images, open the pictures and use the ‘Move tool’ to move Prithvi to Sathish’s Photo. This tool allows you to adjust the size and position. Once you are satisfied, click the green arrow in the bottom. So, you are done. You can change the direction if you need by using Imageà Rotate à Flip horizontal or Vertical.

· Next comes the Lighting adjustment to match the base photo. You can use Enhanceà Adjust lighting options to match the attached picture to the original. You can also use Filtersà Renderà Lighting Effects to adjust the lighting.

You are done. Try this out until my next post on PS tutorials..