25/01/2016

Photoshop

Photoshop skills are required in order to manipulate images before running them through After Effects to be animated and used in film. I have used basic tools and skills to place one image over the next to create the illusion of a single image.

To begin the process, unwanted items had to be removed from the background image. This was done using the rectangular marquee tool to select the image and use the content aware option to replace it with what would be behind it to produce a smooth image.

Next the foreground image was selected and the Polygonal Lasso tool utilised to select the unwanted background from the astronaut. Once this was completed the new foreground image of the astronaut could be placed onto the Mars background.

Although the astronaut had been ‘cut out’ the Polygonal Lasso tool had to be used again in order to resolve the issue of the blue Earth background still being visible in the helmet. To prevent the image looking over- edited and out of place, the transparent helmet visor needed to stay in the final image but with the new background visible through it. I cut around the transparent part of the helmet and separated it from the original image by placing it onto a new layer. I could then change the blending mode of this new layer to screen so that the red Mars layer could be seen through the transparent helmet visor.

Simple enlargements were then made to the foreground image using the transform controls so that it fit to the proportions of the background layer.