Friday, February 17, 2006

THE ANATOMY OF A POST
From where do ideas come?









When I photographed these two cats, I was instantly reminded of the poster for Brokeback Mountain.The first thing that I did was remove the background using the magic eraser in Photoshop. Next, using the lasso tool, I carefully traced around the edges of the black cat and flipped him horizontally so that he would face away from the other cat. Flipping the black cat, however, presented a new problem because part of his back was now missing in this orientation. So using the clone stamp tool, I cloned the rest of his back by targeting similar parts of his body. When the clone stamp tool left a poor transition, I blended the new with the old using the smudge tool.

Then I added the cowboy hats that I shot to match the correct orientation of the cats. Using the lasso tool again, I traced around the black cat's ear. Then I place the hat on his head and pasted the ear in front of it.

Next I used the gaussian blur filter to put a soft focus on the photo that I took of Mount Rainer, pasted the cats over it and added the dialog bubbles.

Finally, I turned the Photoshop file into a jpeg and used the smudge tool along the edges of the cats and their hats to make them as seamless as possible.

10 Comments:

Blogger Sarah said...

Paul, thanks for the Photoshop lesson! You make it sound like any dummy can do it but I know that it takes a very steady hand and more than a little artistry.

You've probably seen this but it's so well done and always makes me laugh.

I scanned the link for viruses and it was clean.

10:32 AM  
Blogger RichardKS said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

10:58 AM  
Blogger lowjake said...

Your photoshop work is good and so is your stated concern for animals.

I object to your connecting yourself to the obvious contempt, even hatred, of rural America, that the elitists of urban, suburban and Hollywood America has riding on this ugly movie. I've heard enough hate-speech from the aforementioned to learn how casually vile American "wanna-be intellectuals" can be.

Animals: Forest-land managed like these peoples' friends in the buildings full of bureaucrats manage them, have super-hot fires that kill every living thing, plant and animal, that ravage badly or unmanaged forest-land. Cowboy, Indian, rancher-owned and timber co.-owned forestland does not suffer such catastrophic death because they actually care about the forests; not their precious Sierra Club ideology.

Consciously or not, these people who hate rural America so much, must hate the forestland animals so completely that they will kill them in unimaginable numbers, just so that they can continue to fuel their hate for rual Americans, who by and large, can manage forests far more humanely than their government friends in the buildings full of bureaucrats can ever bother to do.

Forest fire fighting friends of mine have made this point very clearly to me in addition to my own observations.

Thank you for your patience.

2:01 PM  
Blogger Catnapping said...

great post. a wonderful movie. as one from montana (the only states more rural are wyoming and alaska), we LOVE brokeback mountain up here!

8:28 AM  
Blogger Linda said...

too funny!

6:48 PM  
Blogger Josephine said...

Very good work, indeed!

I love it, by the way, thank you for stopping by and please do come back :)

10:41 PM  
Blogger Sky said...

OMG, this is hysterical! I love your sense of humor. Great photoshop work, too! I need to learn how to do all this stuff.

5:36 AM  
Blogger junebee said...

Brokeback Cats! That's funny!

7:33 AM  
Blogger DEREK said...

don't you just love adobe photoshop! Great entry.

8:11 PM  
Blogger Eidin said...

love the cowboy kitties

1:12 PM  

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