Can’t guess yet? Well first of all, It has come to my attention this week that the topic of choice for my blog seems to be both popular and relevant, because the other day to my surprise, I found that my blog about the new Pepsi logo was already done for me! Woohoo! It is great to welcome aboard a new blogger, the more opinions and stories shared, the better. However, as long as we are making comparisons to ‘Scrubs’ characters, I considered using this blog to go into an endless rant about how my thunder was stolen from me when I realized I could no longer blog about the new Pepsi branding. Then I decided to take the advice of an old-school TV character named Danny Tanner. Some of you may remember wonderful little bits of advice such as, ‘when life gives you a dilemma, make dilemonade’. So that’s what I decided to do in lieu of the Coxian rant. Besides, it is nice to see that I have effectively raised logo awareness, so keep up the good work guys!

So if you’re an avid Motivators Company Blog reader, you already know that Pepsi has decided that it was time for a change for them as well. I won’t go into too much detail about the logo itself, but rather the decision to change it and how that decision undoubtedly makes promotional products a necessary part of their new branding. The purpose in changing a branding is usually to modernize an existing logo that may have become outdated, or even to reflect a new business model or company campaign. Regardless of the reason behind the change, such change always draws attention to their product or company, which in almost all cases is exactly what said company wants by making such a change. Even if someone notices the logo and brings it up in passing conversation, it has done its job by bringing that company to the forefront of their mind. The subconscious is a huge part of advertising, and even if you don’t realize it, you may have chosen a particular brand as your favorite because you are familiar with their advertising or logo. I think its safe to say that we are all familiar with both Pepsi and Coca-Cola, but the next time you have a choice, you may find yourself choosing Pepsi because you want to check out the new design on the can or bottle. It sounds silly, but a new branding very often sways buyers because it is something new and different from what they are used to seeing. Of course in this case, the taste can and will play a role in many buyers’ decision making and avid Coke drinkers will not likely be converted just because of a logo change. But word of mouth isn’t enough to ensure you are raising awareness for your company’s new logo, that’s where promotional products come into play. A soft drink company such as Pepsi would probably be inclined to printing their new logo on custom imprinted koozies, promotional cups or drinkware, or old favorites like promotional hats, promotional t-shirts, and promotional keychains.

This new Pepsi logo is a bit off the reservation in comparison to their last 3 logo changes, but then again it was a drastic change when they went from a text logo to the red, white and blue sphere we all know today. The logo change probably doesn’t affect the printability of their logo since it possesses many of the same elements as the last one, but it is likely that the Pepsi company has utilized the power of promotional products in the recent months and weeks.

So to follow up on a prior blog, I actually stumbled across the new Stop & Shop logo as a one color imprint the other day. As I mentioned in the last blog about the new Stop & Shop branding, the new logo converts to a one color print a little bit more successfully than the last logo because the concept of the design is not as affected as the old one was when converted to only one color. An example of the new logo in one color is seen below on one of their plastic checkout bags,

but if they were really smart and wanted to truly reinforce their intentions of making Stop & Shop ‘the grocery store of the future’, they would print their logo on any number of eco-friendly shopping totes available at Motivators.com. Many grocery stores are offering their customers an eco-friendly option by making recycled or eco-friendly shopping bags available for cheap purchase in an effort to cut down on the use of paper and plastic bags. The best part is, they are reusable and huge! Instead of messing around with multiple plastic bags that may end up ripping anyway, you can often fit your entire grocery trip into just one of these bags. This is a great promotional product because it is useful, responsible, and in addition to having a large, highly visible imprint area for all to see, it also reflects well on your company for caring about the environment and incorporating awareness into your promotion. Below are some examples of eco-friendly bags including one with the added convenience of being able to fold it up into its own little pouch!

This week I decided to focus on a logo that has undoubtedly been on most people’s radar over the past few months. This logo certainly appeared on various promotional products all across the country, and when it was created the designer had to have taken this into consideration because the very point of this logo is to promote. In this case it was to promote and create a branding for a person rather than a business, but the underlying principles in what makes a good and effective logo all apply just the same here. I am of course speaking of the Barack Obama logo that was designed for his presidential campaign. The logo seen below was also seen on a number of promotional t-shirts, promotional hats, promotional magnets, promotional buttons, promotional noise makers and many, many more promotional products over the course of the last several months. With the knowledge that this logo was going to be seen all over the country in various different forms and in many media, the designer had to make sure that the logo would be easily recognized, easily printed, and appealing to the eye. But perhaps in this case, it was just as important, if not more important, that the logo also accurately represented the candidate and his campaign. Speaking strictly from a politically un-biased design standpoint, this logo really succeeds in my opinion. 

Starting from the beginning, you’ll notice that the overall design resembles the letter O. This makes sense for obvious reasons, but this is clearly not merely a logo made out of an initial. In fact, I might be going out on a limb, but the concept of the overall design is so strong, that many people may have even overlooked its resemblance to the letter O. For example, the negative space in the middle of the ‘O’ may be more recognizable to most people as a sun rising over a horizon. This was absolutely intentional as a sun rising can also represent hope and in this particular case it doubles as a metaphor for his campaign. The concept of new horizons and/or new beginnings was a large part of his campaign and was definitely in the minds of his supporters. Of course the red stripes that make up the ‘horizon’ or land were incorporated into the design as a representation of our country’s flag. So despite being relatively simple, this logo makes a big statement in various different ways and in fact, its simplicity is a great virtue when it comes to imprinting it on any promotional product.

Yes, my favorite thorn in my side. Certainly having a car is one of those things that I cannot imagine living without after having relied on it for so many years, but alas it continues to pull money out of my pockets at the worst times. I am sure everyone that has a car has felt the same wayat some point or another. There is never a ‘good time’ to have trouble with your car, but in any case, as I spent quite a bit of time staring at automotive supply logos today, I focused in on Valvoline’s logo. Sure the Monroe Tire logo was all over the place, but in my opinion, there is not much to their logo but a blue font against a yellow background. There is no doubt that plenty of companies opt for simply a font style to be the ‘logo’ that represents their company. But per my last blog, I like something with a little more depth and meaning. At the first glance of this logo, you may consider it quite simple as it does represent the letter ‘V’. But before we consider the Valvoline logo simply a stylized initial, look a little deeper. There must be a reason why they created the V out of 3 colors instead of just one. For all I know, maybe the 3 colors was just a mask for creating a ‘logo’ out of the first initial of their company name.

While that may have been a small part of the designer’s thought process, I conceptualized the logo and the use of its colors to be representative of what the company is. As we know Valvoline is a popular brand of motor oil. Motor Oil has two primary components: a base stock and additives. The base stock is the ingredient that makes up most of the finished motor oil product and its main function is to lubricate moving parts as well as serving as a seal for piston rings and heat removal in other parts of the car. While the ‘additive’ element looks to function as anti-wear, anti-foam, corrosion protection, acid neutralization, maintenance of viscosity, etc.

I picture each of these elements as the components that make up the ‘V’. The blue being the ‘additive’ and the red being the ‘base stock’as if they were being poured out of their respective containers opposite of one another, and the darker blue part in the lower part of the ‘V’ being the point at which the base stock and the additive mix together to create the final motor oil product. After that explanation, it seems that the simple ‘V’ logo is a little more complex than what one may have originally thought. Of course I don’t know for sure if this is the intention, but being a designer that focuses on concept, I hoped that motor oil was comprised of two main elements to lend validity to my original assumptions about the logo. When I researched motor oil and how it is made, I was pleased to see that this was the case, so I hope that this is what went into the logo designer’s decision making, but at the very least it made me think about it, and I ended up learning something new about motor oil today.

This logo is OK for imprinting, there are concise hard lines and an easy to read font, however, the colors may be problematic in some cases. Converting to one color would be pretty easy, though if my reasoning behind the logo is correct, some of that concept would be lost, but unlike the older Stop & Shop logo, the ‘Valvoline concept’ is probably not as widely received in the public eye so the one color version would serve just as well for the company’s branding. With all colors being used, I might recommend a small space in between each of the elements of the V to avoid color overlapping because of the tight registration, much like the way it would be done if converted to one color. Either way, I am sure Valvoline’s logo will be appearing on many a holiday giveaway this season, or a number of automotive promotional products and/or promotional key chains all year long.

Ahh blogging. Back again! It’s about time too! I like blogging when I have the time to do so, and I think it has been a long enough span in between blogs that you have most likely gotten through all 3 of my prior blogs. I say likely, but if you still need more time, I completely understand, those things are loooooooooong. I guess I realized how long they were turning out when I wrote them, but I felt it was necessary information in order to fully describe the processes used to create the photoshop effects that I was demonstrating. But in the end, I guess tutorials tend to be better when it’s in the form of a video, so if anyone has any interest in how things in photoshop are done, I am all for it, just let me know what you want to see and I’ll just create a video and post it on our Motivators TV Blog.

In the mean time I figured I could use this art zone section to talk about the art of promotional products. After all, what would promotional products be without your message or logo? So speaking of logos, I noticed a few months ago that a well known grocery store in our area has recently changed their logo and thus their branding. Your branding / logo is important to your company because it gives people an initial impression of your company or service. Many logos generally try to somehow describe what your company does, or what to expect from your service. This is not always the case and it is not a rule, in fact it can be argued that the most important element of a logo is how memorable it is. This is the idea of branding. If people recognize and remember your logo, you are already helping your company out. I think that an ideal logo is unique, eye-catching and conceptual. But in the promotional products industry we have to think about another important element in logos; the element of printability. I would say that since my start in this industry, I now look at every logo from not only a design point of view, but from the promotional products point of view and ask myself ‘how well will that print on a corporate gift or holiday giveaway?’

Of course imprint method and the item you are printing on has plenty to do with that question, but nonetheless it is something that I and probably many of my co-workers think about when looking at a logo. It seems like both of these Stop & Shop logos would print fairly well with most imprint methods. As for the logos themselves, the original definitely plays off of the store name more than the new one by using red and green colored circles to represent traffic lights, coinciding with the ‘stop’ element of the company name. However you wouldn’t really know what you are shopping for just from looking at the logo. The new one reminds me of slices of fruit, though it focuses less on the actual name of the store. Sometimes this is a tough decision to make, but in the end the newer version certainly has a more modern feel to it, and this was the concept that they were going for, as the Stop & Shop chain released this new logo as a part of their commitment to creating the ‘grocery store of the future’ where many new features involving the use of technology to create a more efficient shopping experience will be appearing in Stop & Shop stores in the forthcoming year. The newer logo also converts to one color better than the original. Ideally companies would love to use all of the colors when printing their logo, but budget restraints as well as practicality can commonly force a company to use a one color imprint. The new design would not lose its concept as much as the old one because the color of the circles in the original design are crucial to the concept of the logo.

Hello Everyone! (All four of you) I’m sure that you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for this edition of the art zone blog. After a teaser like I gave you at the end of the smoke monster blog, how could you not? So even though it’s a bit late, it’s better late than never, right? So as promised, the following is a description of how to create effects that resemble a dementor attack from the Harry Potter movies. This could be something fun that you do for a big Harry Potter fan or even just to pass the time and learn something new about Photoshop and some of its tools. Now I must warn you, it is very difficult to find good images of a dementor attack, in fact the only thing I had to go on (other than my memory) were two videos that I found online. But no excuses, here we go. The image you see below is my friend Sarah. She happens to be a very big Harry Potter fan and avid reader of the art zone blog, so she specifically requested that I use her as the subject and I was happy to oblige.

Step one is basically trimming and cleaning up the image so that it looks the way you want it to look before you start applying effects. I wanted a darker background than the off white wall color because the effect will come across better when seen against a darker background. This was simply a matter of using the magic wand tool, which you can select by pressing the ‘w’ key when your image is open. Simply click on the white wall and almost all of the wall, but none of Sarah has been selected. The magic wand is a great tool for cropping out shapes without the tediousness of cutting it all out on your own. However be forewarned that it wont always be this easy. The magic wand tool reads the images pixels and attempts to select the object using the contour of its shape. If the shape you are trying to cut out has a strong contrast or hard edges that separate it from the other shapes, it should work fairly easily, however in a case where the colors of the shapes seem to blend in with one another, the wand may have a harder time interpreting the edges of the shape you are trying to select. Even here, it did not pick up everything perfectly on the first try, so I had to go in close and take care of some cleaning up on my own. I then filled in the background by creating another layer below the layer that Sarah is on, and made sure that the primary and secondary colors I have selected were black or dark. I then selected the ‘filter’ drop down menu, and chose ‘render’, then ‘clouds’. This is a simple effect that you can use in a variety of different ways. Once you have selected ‘clouds’ the entire layer is filled with this cloudy design. This is exactly what I wanted, but if you ever wanted to create the effect of a blue sky with white clouds, all you would have to do is make your primary color sky blue, and your secondary color white before selecting the ‘clouds’ effect. You may also notice that I have cropped off some of her lower body and moved her more towards the left edge of the canvas. This is to create plenty of space for the dementor that we will be adding in later.

            Now for the fun, simply cut out the shape of just her face with either the elliptical marquee tool on the top left corner of your tools palette, or you can use a lasso depending on how much of her face you want to use. In this case, it’s not of the utmost importance that the cut out is smooth or exactly the contour of her face because we are going to be doing plenty of work to it. As long as her main facial features are included in the selection, we are good to go. Once the selection is where you would like it to be, simply right-click and choose ‘new layer via copy’, this will create a new layer that is just Sarah’s face. I recommend making a few copies of this layer, or at the very least make sure you have one extra copy of it because we will revisit this layer a number of times before we’re done. So after the new layer is created with just her face, we’re going to use a fun effect called ‘liquify’. As long as the correct layer is selected, you may now go to the ‘filter’ drop down menu again and this time at the very top, click on ‘liquify’. This pulls up a new window with lots of new options. You can experiment in this window to figure out how to do other cool stuff, but that’s another blog. Right now we want to make sure that the tool selected is the one that sort of looks like a finger smudging a line. It’s the top tool on the new palette that you see. Once this tool is selected you can click the mouse once the brush position is over her face and begin dragging up and away from her face. You will notice that the face becomes very distorted with every stroke of this brush. Continue to pull and/or push the brush in the direction you want it to go until you have something that is not really recognizable as a face, but rather a smear of paint with many different colors in it. You can then click ‘OK’ and you will be returned to the Photoshop screen that we all know and love. I then used the eraser tool with soft edges to help take away the hard edges of this smear so it appears to be more of a vapor or gas. You may also want to use the blur tool for this, but you can use your own judgment based on how you would like it to look. I used both tools to create the effect that I wanted, and I also reduced the opacity of the layer so that you can slightly see through it.

            We’re getting closer to where we want to be, but not quite there yet. I then used some of the additional copies of her face that I saved from earlier, and by simply hitting Ctrl + ‘T’ you can freely transform this layer so that you can squish it and stretch it into a shape that seems to fit into the smear that we created. I used this layer multiple times so that it was consistent throughout the smear. You may also want to use a combination of the blur and eraser tools to accomplish this, and again I adjusted the opacity so that you can see through it, but only slightly. According to the way I saw it on the videos I found, you’re going to want it to appear as if something is sort of sucking the features off of her face, but not quite clear enough that you can recognize features definitively. The additional layers of facial features should be used mostly to help you imply the features with all the actual colors of her real face. Small tweaks and adjustments will be probably need to be made to neaten it all up, but that is basically the gist of it.

            We’re almost there now. You should see it starting to come together at this point. The only other thing I did, was combine all of the layers that make up the ‘smear’ as I’ve been affectionately calling it, then I revisited the ‘liquify’ tool to create the pattern that sort of looks like it is curving and tapering off towards the end. As you experiment with this tool it will become easier to use, so be patient. Basically, I just ever so slightly kissed the smear with the edge of the liquify brush which moved the smear just slightly upwards. I repeated the same step again, but this time, more to the right, and from the top moving down. Once the curves in the smear were to my liking, I clicked ‘OK’ to return back to the regular Photoshop screen. Then, by either double clicking the layer itself on the layer window, or using the ‘layer’ drop down menu and selecting ‘layer style’, I created a small white ‘outer glow’ on this layer to make it seem even more like a vapor or gas, as this is supposed to be your soul being sucked out of you.

The only small step left to do, is to barely smudge Sarah’s real face on the original picture. The smudge tool is hidden behind the blur tool so simply just click and hold down until you can choose the smudge tool, which also appears to be a finger smudging a line. Don’t forget to save before you do this, just in case it doesn’t come out how you would like the first time, there’s also the history window where in most cases you can re-trace your steps to the point where you first started creating the smudge effect and start new. I used quick strokes over her eyes, nose and mouth in the direction of the smear to make her face appear that it is being slightly morphed underneath the vapor.

This project might take some practice or a few tries before you get it to where you want it, but at least in the process you got to experiment with a cool tool that you may have never used before.

            The dementor image you see was actually pulled off of a product page on a collectable toy website. This dementor is actually an action figure that I cut away from its white background with the magic wand tool, and inserted into this image where the vapor begins to taper off. Once he was positioned the way I wanted him, I gave him a dark black ‘outer glow’ on the ‘layer style’ selection from the ‘layer’ drop down menu, and while I was there, I checked off the box for a ‘color overlay’ and made the overlaying color black. This basically turns the dementor into a silhouette, so simply lower the opacity of the color overlay while you are still in the ‘layer style’ window, and now the dementor is darker and seems to blend with our dark background a little better. There we have it! I hope all that was worth your time. I figure even if you aren’t going to try it, it might still be interesting to know the processes that went into creating this visual effect. But for the future, if any of the loyal art zone fans have any questions or suggestions, I am all ears. 

Yesterday was the first episode of LOST on ABC, after a brief, yet torturous few weeks in which the show did not air any new episodes. Many people that enjoy the show are obsessive over it like I am, however I won’t speak for anyone else because my obsession with the show borders on insanity, but then again, I’m a pretty intense person so usually everything I get into, I get into 110%.  That being said, I decided that I wanted to blog about LOST because I figured it would be a good way to channel all of the excitement and thought that I have put into last nights episode.

Last time, I talked about how Photoshop and/or graphic art appears in our everyday lives, perhaps even where we don’t realize it. Today I’m going to talk about how Photoshop can help you create some really cool effects that you might want to practice just for fun. Little things like what I am about to show you can help you liven up a photo album, play a practical joke on someone, or even just create something cool that you might end up paying $20 for if you passed a booth or kiosk in a mall. We’ve all seen those booths that take your picture and somehow manipulate it to look like you’re in a place you’ve never been before. But with Photoshop, you can do things like that at home and for free. Let's attack the mall shall we?

Below is a picture of an ordinary mall with no changes done to it yet. The menu that you see is the brush palette which you can access by selecting the brush tool and right-clicking on your canvas. In most versions of Photoshop there are brushes available that may not show up on the original brush palette. To check out what other brushes might be available to you, click the small arrow on the top right corner of the palette (as shown in the image below).  Your going to want to choose ‘wet brushes’ and then Photoshop will ask you if you want to append the list, which I always select because it will then add these brush choices to your current list. Click the picture to see it a more detailed version

Once you have selected the wet brush (as shown in the image above), you may change the size of it to whatever you think works for your particular picture. The wet brush spreads significantly with only one click of the mouse so you may not need such a large one. I then decided that I wanted my smoke monster to be creeping into the store on the right side, so I started to just swirl my brush in small circles starting from the top left corner of the image gradually becoming smaller as you get to the head of the monster which is entering the store. Simply use smaller circular motions when getting closer to where the head should be, or select a smaller brush size. You’ll notice that this particular brush is doing most of the work for you. The circular brush strokes are really all you have to do and it starts to come together and look like the smoke monster immediately. To finish it off I simply created another layer and used the same brush but a slightly lighter shade of black to add highlights. I simply ‘dabbed’ (one mouse click) a bunch of brush strokes over the original layer of smoke, then gave this ‘highlight’ layer a quick once over with the blur tool, and slightly adjusted the opacity of the layer until I got it to look how I wanted it. As it stands now the monster looks like its entering the store by passing in front of that tree, but I think it makes more sense if the monster is behind the tree. The way to do this is to combine the two layers of smoke that you have, (you can do this by selecting both layers with your mouse and the shift key, then right-clicking and selecting ‘Merge Layers’) I then took the opacity of the layer down enough so that I could see completely through it. Since I can now clearly see the tree’s shape behind the smoke, I am able to use the lasso tool to carefully cut out the shape of the tree in the smoke layer. In other words you are tracing the contour of the tree but then cutting that shape out of the smoke layer to create the appearance that the smoke is behind the tree. After you have done your cutting, just adjust the opacity of the layer back to about 97 or 98% (the real smoke monster is slightly translucent depending on how you are looking at it, here I think darker is better and more realistic looking) and there you have it!

That was really simple and not time consuming at all, yet very effective. I hope you have enjoyed this tip and I hope if you haven’t discovered LOST yet, you get into it immediately. You wont be sorry. Maybe next week I can show you how to make it look like a dementor from Harry Potter is sucking the happiness out of one of your friends.

Being a graphic artist is a pretty sweet gig. Since I was very young I’ve always enjoyed creating artwork, though back then there were no programs as sophisticated as Photoshop to help people create art. In fact, personal computers were not common in most households until the mid-eighties to early nineties. So like any other artists, I had to use traditional methods and traditional media for creating art. I started off very young so innately I was attracted to cartoons and liked drawing my favorite ones. Drawing had always come pretty naturally to me, but as I would learn, it takes a lot of practice and technique to become a realistic artist, and even those that practice their craft for decades still believe that they can improve. I guess that’s why they say ‘an artists’ work is never done.’ I think they say that for a lot of professions, whoever ‘they’ may be. So as I got older, that element of realism became something that fascinated and impressed me.

There’s a story that I always revert back to when I think about some of the reasons why I love creating art. It was approximately 6^th grade if my memory serves me correctly, and my friends and I were really into NBA basketball. When I was bored or had some spare time I would just sketch whatever was in my mind, which at the time was a great deal of NBA basketball, namely my favorite player and team Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. (And just as a point of fact, I am still a Chicago Bulls fan, only now I’m a more disappointed Chicago Bulls fan.) So when my friends would see some of the sketches that I would come up with, they were first impressed, but then it got their gears turning. Sure the drawing of Michael Jordan soaring over a defender for a dunk was cool to them, but it would be much cooler if it were their favorite player. I understood that, but the point at which it dawned on me that being able to draw was not only fun but advantageous, was when they asked me to draw their favorite player dunking, but not over just any defender, they wanted an image of their favorite player dunking over Shaquille O’Neal.

Shaq was just entering the league and his size and strength helped him dominate the paint right from the very beginning. So of course, why not make your favorite player look better by having him dunk over a dominant defensive force? Makes sense, and at the time Shawn Kemp was a prolific dunker, wasn’t overweight, and had maybe only 4 of his reported 13 children. So it was in the realm of possibility that Shawn Kemp could dunk over Shaquille O’Neal in the right situation, but regardless of the chances of such an event occurring, I was happy to oblige.

It made me laugh when one of my friends asked me to draw him a picture of Dan Majerle dunking over Shawn Kemp, just to annoy my other buddy. This kid obviously had an attachment to Dan Majerle and he was a fine 3 point shooter in his day, but anyone who was familiar with the NBA back then knows that Dan Majerle might have dunked the ball in an actual game maybe twice, and more than likely it was on a wide open breakaway to the basket with no defenders anywhere nearby. So the proposed situation was very unlikely to ever happen, but it was that unlikelihood that made me think about how cool it was to be able to create an image that looks believable even if the situation itself seems improbable or impossible.

It’s this very premise that had artists, photographers, and graphic designers very excited about the capabilities that a program like Photoshop offered them. Since its creation, the program has developed and grown by leaps and bounds and will continue to improve. So keeping with the idea of making the improbable happen in the world of sports, I will show you how ESPN is able to show their viewers the most up-to-date images when there are player trades. I don’t know if many people realize this, but when a rumored trade is being reported on, there is a graphic artist working on altering the player’s headshot so that once the trade is finalized, ESPN can instantly give you the closure you need by showing you that player in his new hat and/or jersey. Clearly if a trade was just finalized as the report indicates, how then did said player have the time to put on his new uniform for a photo shoot? Eventually an actual headshot will be taken, but in the mean time, ESPN wants to flash that image up on your screen so that reality can better sink in.

Did you hear about the trade that sent Manny Ramirez to the New York Mets for a bag of popcorn and a gift certificate to the Boston Cineplex? Yeah, I didn’t hear about that one either, but if you read it in an article somewhere and it was accompanied by the following picture, you might just believe it.

In about five minutes worth of photo manipulation, you could cause an uproar among the followers of Major League Baseball, especially Mets and Red Sox fans! This was done with some of the very basic tools and techniques in Photoshop, but still appears pretty convincing. Below are the original photos that I worked with.

             

One of the most important factors in photo manipulation and the creation of a new, believable image is attention to detail. The best way to pay close attention to detail is to zoom in as close as you need. You will start to notice colors and shapes turning into individual pixels. Close ups on pixels don’t give you a great idea of what the overall image looks like, but it allows you to pin-point the spots that need extra attention and care. Once you’ve taken some action, you can always zoom back out to the image’s original size to check on your progress.

This one was pretty straight forward and utilized only basic Photoshop technique. After carefully outlining Jorge Sosa’s hat with several clicks of the polygonal lasso, I right-clicked the selected area and created a ‘New Layer via Cut’ so that the hat stood alone as its own layer. I then did the same thing with his shirt, then simply positioned these layers over the original image of Manny Ramirez and slightly adjusted them so that it fit him perfectly. Minor adjustments that needed to be made were only some slight scaling or even some very slight stretching and rotation. All of which can be done by using Ctrl+T to be able to freely transform the selected layer. Once they were in position it was a matter of removing Manny Ramirez’ Red Sox hat from the original image so that there was no evidence of it being there in the first place. The jersey actually fit quite nicely over Manny’s original image, but as you can see his shoulders were positioned a little differently than Jorge Sosa’s. So in order to really make it work, I actually used part of Manny’s real shoulder and made it blend with the Mets jersey by changing the red stripe on his shoulder to blue, and using the blur tool to make the two jerseys appear as one. If you need to apply an effect to a certain part of a layer, don’t forget that you can deconstruct layers by outlining them with the selection tool of your choice and right-clicking to select the ‘New Layer via Cut’ feature as was mentioned before. So I created a new layer with only the right side of the Mets jersey so that I could apply a slight drop shadow beneath that blue undershirt to create the appearance of depth. Adding slight drop shadows are an effective way of making things appear real because no matter where you are, the natural light, or even lack thereof will cast shadows against its immediate surroundings.

As I stare at it, I notice some slight imperfections, but there’s that ‘artist’s work is never done’ thing again. Despite this being a quick and simple example, it is still easy to see what a helpful program Photoshop can be in various aspects of life.