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A few weeks ago I saw a bulletin that had a gradient background with silhouetted people jumping in the air. I wanted to recreate the image and knew that we were going to have a chance to do so. I tried 2 different variations for this project, one with a natural image and the other as an illustrated image.

The natural image is of a photographer behind a large format camera taking a picture of the lions lying on the log. I liked the idea behind this one with the silhouetted photographer hiding behind the bushes to photograph the lions, but with the two images together, I wasn’t really “feeling” the composite. Maybe I could have added some dramatic color changes to adjust the mood.

I used the quick selection tool with a combo of the lasso tool. I also added a mask to my layer so I could adjust the silhouette by brushing on or off the black areas.

These are the two images I used.

And here is the final:

Here are the photos I used for the illustrated image:

The second project is a silhouette of my son at his 3-year-old b-day party hitting the piñata. This one took me all day (sorry babe), thinking about what I was going to do, how to lay it out and choosing many photos that did not make the cut. I originally wanted to create a concert feel because I was apart of one this weekend, but to my disappointment there were tons of illustration that were very similar to what I wanted to do.

I had an idea as to the background I wanted, so I created that first using the rectangle marquee tool and creating a gradient in each strip. I also knew I wanted grass at the bottom. I thought I would try adding a tree to see how it came out, I tried to select a lot of different types of trees but I did not like the way the were coming out. This tree was selected as you see it, at first I did not like it but it grew on me. I like how the branches extend across the top of the image kind of creating a border. For my son, I needed to use 2 separate images because the piñata photo my son was cut off and adding only half his body didn’t look to appealing. So I found one of him on his scooter and I selected his bottom half of his body and added it to his torso. I also added a mask to blend the two layers together.

All in all, I flipped the kid (and resized), the tree and the large blades of grass, added some extra visual elements, used a combo of the color range with the lasso, marquee and quick selection tool, refine edge, changed blending modes and created masking on some of the layers.

This one is definitely my favorite of the two projects.

So here is the final:

*All images were taken from the internet except for the child*