Image Manipulation 2: Photo Repair

This photo dates back to 1929 and if you look at the top image you can see that it showed it's age. My mother showed me the picture and asked if I could fix it with my computer "magic". I had never seen a picture in this bad a condition but decided to take the challenge. By the way, the child in the center, that's my mom aged 1 year old - isn't she cute! (Nice boots!)Anyway, I work on it for a week off and on, trying things I'd never tried before. The final result is the photo on the bottom. I'm still not entirely satisfied but I learned a hell of a lot while I did it. And I enjoyed myself doing it!

What I Do (Part 2) - Image Manipulation

Creating computer images from scratch is often difficult, time consuming work. Image manipulation is way more fun but can also be difficult. I work with already existing images to produce new, original images. It's even more fun when you work with images of people you know (muahahaha!).

At the top left is "Forest Fayrie". To give the image depth, I used an extreme close-up of a bush then blurred it. Next, I looked through all my files for an appropriate model. I chose this Asian model because she had the neccessary fayrie-like attributes. Then, I gave her pointed ears and slanted her eyebrows and tainted her green. I searched and found a nice clear picture of dragonfly wings, cut them and pasted them. Finally, I cut and pasted a bunch of flowers in front of her. This created the illusion that she's really tiny. There's a lot of checking to see if part of the image is too dark/light, too blurred/sharp. The exact process is a little more complex, but you get the idea.

Next is a modified image of my buddy, Francis. He brought me this picture of himself just as he was about to leave the Bahamas. He said he was satisfied with the image of himself but didn't like the background. I told him to leave it to me and started chuckling like a madman. Having known him for twenty years or so, I knew exactly what to do to his precious photo. The Enterprise in the sky recalls one certain episode where the ship looks like a cardboard cut-out. It moved with a jerky motion that always had us in stitches. The Death Star from Star Wars? Why not? As he didn't like his boss at the time, I cut a face from a photo of Albert Einstein. Since it was black & white, I had to tint it with a flesh tone that more or less matched others in the scene. Just for fun, I added Homer Simpson crawling in Einstein's hair (Einstein's a genius & Homer is not - get it?). At the time, Monsters Inc. had just come out on video and we both liked Mike - so there he is on Francis' shoulder. A naked girl? Heck, what warm-blooded male wouldn't like that? And I added a whole bunch of other stuff, some obvious, some not (I made him a Terminator - just for fun). See that other little green guy at the extreme lower left? That's Glyx, a cartoon character I developed a few years ago. I have a feeling that you'll probably be seeing real soon.

Finally, this is an image manipulation done by a professional with a fancy computer and lots of expensive software (Maxim magazine). This one's totally nuts. All the cars, people and, yes, chicken are real pictures. Whoever did this image is a master. Every image is seamlessly put together (all I added was the words). One day I, too, shall be a master.