Straight Outta Arrakis

This isn't an offical part of 14 Days of Freedom (which I feel prentenious about captilizing, by the way). Although I am talking about one of my goals, it's not the end-of-the-day report.


Hmm. So, when I volunteered to Photoshop a missing black belt in our group picture at camp, I figured it'd be a piece of cake for someone whose been messing around with the program for a year. A little Magnetic Lasso here, a little Copy&Pasting there, and I'd be set. Not so, my friends. This was a challenge to test the very limits of my patience, ingenuity, and mastery of Ctrl + anything.

My first problem was that of getting the bugger out of his indivual photo in the first place. The picture they took of him was in a gymnasium, lit from the top, with those shinily-painted gym cinderblocks in the background. It was a NIGHTMARE. The light was glinting every which way, screwing up my cheat-y Magnetic Lasso tool and forcing me to put back areas I'd already deleted, just to make sure I hadn't taken a big chunk of his leg with me.

Then, I had to find a spot for him. When we took the picture, we had to fit 45+ people in the view of a home digital camera. Before it started to rain. We were packed together so close, sardines felt roomy. I tried tacking him on the end of the line, but the fact that he had no feet kinda screwed that one over. So I plopped him in the only place I could fit his whole face and an acceptable amount of shoulder, and nearly called it a day.

Then I looked at him. He looked like a Jedi ghost. He was bright and blue while everyone around him was this dingy yellow-pink. Now, this errant black belt is, in fact, a pastor, but his is not Jesus. And I didn't think he ought to glow like him.

I won't even get IN to the details on the long, tedious, long, painful, long, eyedrying, long, tear-inducing, and long process that was correcting the color. I used every Photoshop trick I knew, and it didn't come close to looking right. So, I thought, maybe the shadows are the root of all evil. His light came from the dank and dead-fly-spotted fluresant brillance of the gym, whereas his fellows bathed in the spotty glamour of a rainclouded sky. I tried to paint in some shadows. It didn't just fail- it phailed. Hard.

I gotta get this right, I thought. If not for the sake of my teacher, at least the sake of my pride. And with that, I noticed he didn't have any shadows around his eyes from the above lighting. Volia, problem solve.

Or not- my attempts to darken his eyes resulted in a disappointing descent from looking like Jesus to looking like Satan. The hour was midnight, and it was time for a miracle.

I had been guiding off this man's neighbor the entire time, for color, shoulder angle, height. Mayhap, I thought, I could borrow his eyes.

So borrow his eyes I did. With Copy&Paste, soft-edged erasers, the Rotate tool, and more Dune-inspired trepidation since I gave a stock-photo baby the eyes of the Ibad, I duplicated one guy's eyes and smacked them on another. Will I have creepy blind nightmares forever now? Yes. Did it look as cool as beans when it was done? Yes.

Bottom line: I'm in ur photographs, stealing ur eyez. Watch out, world.