- Project 1: A Younger You in Minutes
- Project 2: Fast Forward
- Project 3: Who’s the Tallest of Them All?
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Project 3: Who’s the Tallest of Them All?
We’ve created the illusion of youth and the semblance of aging; now we’ll work our magic on the vertically challenged. Unless you’re going out for Olympic gymnastics, being tall is a distinct advantage in American culture. Figure 3.18 shows my petite niece, Nesa, with three classmates at their high school prom.
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Figure 3.18 Nesa’s the short one. (Photo courtesy of Nesa Levy.)
Level with Me
Open promGirls.jpg. First, let’s fix the angle of the image. Whoever took this shot was not holding the camera vertically. Drapes don’t hang at a slant like that. Not if you’re sober.
Select, All (Command/Ctrl+A) and apply Image, Transform, Free Transform (Command/Ctrl+T). Move the cursor near a corner of the bounding box. When the cursor looks like a curved double-headed arrow rotate the bounding box so the drapes hang perfectly, as in Figure 3.19.
Press the Return key to commit the transform. Don’t worry about cropping the image until later.
Use the Lasso tool (L) to make a selection around the two girls as shown in Figure 3.20. The ideal selection will fit snugly along Armanda’s dress (she’s wearing the black necklace) and include all the curtains above their bodies. This will minimize the amount of repair work needed later.
Edit, Copy (Command/Ctrl +C) and Edit, Paste (Command/Ctrl +V) the selection. Now the two girls are on their own layer. Figure 3.21 shows the Layers palette after the Paste command.
Use the Move tool (V) to drag the layer downward until Armanda is about the same height as Nesa. This reveals the tops of their heads on the original backgound, as shown in Figure 3.22. We’ll fix that next.
We’ll use the Clone Stamp (S) to cover the tops of the original girls’ heads with the curtains. Click on a crease in the curtain while holding down the Option/Alt key to establish the source pixel. I painted a red crosshairs in Figure 3.23 to suggest a good source pixel and a purple spot to show where to begin painting clone strokes. Enable the Align option for the Clone Stamp so each stroke will be offset the proper amount from the source pixel. Also check the Use All Layers box.
Click on the Background in the Layers palette to make it the target for this step. Clone another piece of curtain over the "old" shoulder showing between the girls’ heads.
Make the layer active and choose the Eraser tool . Carefully erase the excess pixels around Armanda’s shoulder and dress. Bright green in Figure 3.24 shows where to erase.
Merge the layer into the background with the Flatten Image command in the Layers menu.
Clone curtain fabric over the original chunk of dress, indicated with yellow in Figure 3.24.
Use the Lasso tool to select the area of shoulder shown with the dotted red line. Copy and paste to make this a new layer and move it into position on Nesa.
Erase excess parts of the skin graft as needed. Reduce the opacity of the layer temporarily so you can see where to erase.
Zoom in to see a tiny bit of the dreaded "red-eye" effect in Nesa’s right eye. Armanda has it, too. Use the Red Eye Removal tool (Y) to fix that problem. Just drag it over the pupil of any offending eye and the red just disappears. See Figure 3.25. Sorry, it won’t work on bloodshot eyes.
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Figure 3.19 Angle fixed, Nesa still short.
Decide which Subjects to Alter
We can either make Nesa taller relative to the other girls in the picture, or make them shorter. Let’s make the two girls on the right shorter. Why? Notice that if we make Nesa taller, we’ll have to perform some reconstructive surgery on both the right and left side, where she joins each of two other girls. If we choose to make the two girls on the right shorter, we’ll cut that work load in half. So, whether you call it efficiency or laziness, the decision is made.
NOTE
It’s even easier to hang those drapes perfectly with the Straighten Tool in version 4. The image shows that I chose Crop to Remove Background from the Canvas Options. Then I dragged a line perpendicular to the drapes, indicating where I wanted the new horizontal axis to be. Let go of the mouse, and the image is straightened and cropped instantly!
Getting it straight.
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Figure 3.20 Lasso them gals, yeehah!
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Figure 3.21 Layer them gals, wahooo!
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Figure 3.22 Black blobs seen floating above heads at senior prom!
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Figure 3.23 Helpful hints for clone work.
Retouch and Touchup
Okay, let’s work on the ragged area between Nesa and Armanda.
Figure 3.24 has color-coded help for the next several steps.
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Figure 3.24 More helpful hints, or colorful graffiti.
Final Repairs
We’ll have to perform a skin graft on Nesa’s shoulder to cover the dark blob, shown with a red triangle. Assume that the proper blood tests and tissue compatibility matches have been performed, and Armanda is an appropriate shoulder donor.
NOTE
The figure shows our progress at this point. It’s reasonably convincing if you don’t notice that Nesa’s arm would now have to be very, very long to reach Armanda’s waist. That’s why I circled her hand in Figure 3.24 and added an arrow indicating it needs to be moved up. Frankly, at this point I’m inclined to just clone some curtain and dress fabric over that hand and be done with it.
What long arms you have!
And here they are, in Figure 3.26, nicely cropped. Three average sized young women and one statuesque amazon. Hey, it’s all relative.
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Figure 3.25 Got the red out.
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Figure 3.26 Heighten your prospects for success in college.