Let's Do Some Changing
January 20, 2008 9:09 PM | 1

 

I thought it might be fun to show the process of getting from this photo ...

... to this one:

Here's all the layers:

I took a couple of pictures of the boys; fortunately I was standing in mostly the same position. I liked a different version of Evan, so I dropped that in; then dropped in a Michael from another photo. Their edges took a little sculpting to blend properly, especially where Evan goes behind Steven. Then I had to fix the room tone behind Michael; a blue tint in the upper right; and some splotchy noise that was amplified by the compositing. Then I made the room tone more natural, and added an effect I call "CD cover" because it looks nice: I take the channel with the best data (red, in this case) and overlaid it to improve contrast. The first CD cover appear just on their faces. The second one appears on top of everything except their faces, and has a blur attached. That helps soften the grain -- this was taken at a high ISO. The last layer is a vignette, darkening the edges and adding a bit more blur.

Here's the progress:

Ta da.