Project3.Push-Me Pull-You Puppy


Project 3. Push-Me Pull-You Puppy

Continuing with our nursery rhyme theme, we'll now create one of the push-me-pull-you animals that you might see if you were to visit Doctor Doolittle.

When I first envisioned this project, I thought I'd go for the standard easy, shot-from-the-side sort of photo, but I didn't really see any benefit to taking the easy way out. Instead I have a three-quarter shot that I'll use to demonstrate this project. So, here we go...a two-headed dog.

Because we'll be replicating one dog, we need only the one photo. Of course, when you're done with this project and you've done several of the others, you can try your luck at creating your own strange animal (and even people, perhaps) collections.

To get started with this project, open any image similar to the one you see in Figure 4.16. If you don't have access to a similar image, you can download the one I'm working with (Sugrrr Reclining.tif) from the book's website.

Figure 4.16. Sugrrr at rest.


With the image of the puppy open, the first thing you need to do is to make a copy of the front part of the puppy that will act as her other, er, front, I guess.

1.

Select the Freehand Selection tool and make a loose selection around the front of the puppy (see Figure 4.17).

Figure 4.17. Selecting the front of the puppy.


2.

With the selection made, select Edit, Copy and then Edit, Paste As New Layer to copy the copy of the pup into its own layer.

3.

Select the Pick tool and move the copy into place alongside the original. At the same time, resize the copy so it appears to recede a little (see Figure 4.18).

Figure 4.18. Moving the copy into place and resizing it.


Removing the Backend

I'm not sure how I can put this delicately: We need to remove the dog's butt. That is, the lawn should be copied over some of the back end of the pup so the new front end will look as if it's part of the same dog rather than another look-alike.

4.

Activate the bottommost layer by clicking its layer in the Layers palette.

5.

Create a new raster layer above the bottom layer by clicking the New Raster icon in the upper-left corner of the Layers palette. This layer will hold the edits from the Clone Brush tool.

6.

Select the Clone Brush tool and use it to cover some of the dog's rear with the surrounding lawn, but just enough so that the new copy appears to blend in properly (see Figure 4.19).

Figure 4.19. Cloning out some of the dog's rear end


7.

Select the Pick tool and use it to move the copy a little closer. The idea is to cover up some of the curve of the original's back. Don't worry if you start to see some of the grass that got picked up along with the selection.

8.

If you do see areas of lawn around the copy (see Figure 4.20), you can use the Eraser tool to remove them. Before you do that, though, follow along a bit further to see how some of that can be avoided.

Figure 4.20. Some of the lawn needs to be erased from the copied layer


Adding a Little Camera Blur

You can see from the photo that it was taken with a lens that shows a lot of depth by blurring the objects in the foreground and background. We'll need to add this same effect to the copy of the pup so it appears to be farther back in the image.

9.

Make the copy layer active by clicking its layer in the Layers palette.

10.

Select Adjust, Blur, Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to about 5. You might want to turn on the Auto Proof so you can see the effect as it's applied. Note that this effect takes quite a bit of horsepower, so your computer might take several seconds or longer to display the results. The Gaussian Blur does a pretty good job of faking the camera blur (see Figure 4.21).

Figure 4.21. Faking a camera blur.


11.

Use the Eraser tool to remove any of the lawn that still covers areas of the original from around the edges of the copy.

Adding the Final Touches

Because I've moved the copy so close to the original that it overlaps, I need to fix that. All that's required, really, is to copy some of the original muzzle from the bottom layer to a new layer at the top of the layer stack.

12.

Select the Freehand Selection tool and use it to make a selection around the dog's muzzle (see Figure 4.22).

Figure 4.22. Selecting part of the original dog's muzzle.


13.

Select Edit, Copy to copy the muzzle. Then select Edit, Paste As New Layer.

14.

Move the muzzle copy into place so that it is exactly over the original. Then click and drag the layer in the Layers palette so it's above the copy of the dog. You can see my final effort in Figure 4.23.

Figure 4.23. The final push-me-pull-you puppy.




Corel Paint Shop Pro X Digital Darkroom
Corel Paint Shop Pro X Digital Darkroom
ISBN: 0672328607
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 109

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