Digital Focus: Add Wild Special Effects

Use image-editing tricks to shrink the kids and put them in a jar.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Shrink the Kids With a Special-Effects Photo

Have you ever been impressed by fanciful digital art in magazine advertisements that depict the impossible or the far-fetched? The creativity and imagination that goes into some of those photos is simply astounding.

I can't promise that you will soon be able to photograph a cow driving your car or aliens posing with your dog while it plays the piano, but this week I want to show you how easy it is to create something both cute and clever--we'll trap a kid in an old mayonnaise jar. If you're already comfortable with your digital camera and an image-editing program, you can make this special-effects photo in about 10 minutes. I hope that when you see how easy it is to pull off this stunt, you'll want to make up some clever gags of your own.

Prepare the Set

We'll need at least two actors to pose in the photo: Enlist your spouse and one or more of your kids; if you don't have either of those, just call the neighbors and offer them a pizza if they visit right away.

Next, configure your camera to shoot in its highest resolution mode, and--this is the most important part--grab an old mayonnaise jar. Actually, any kind of jar will do. It just needs to be moderately large and transparent. I used a plastic peanut butter jar in my version of this shot.

Takes One and Two

Now it's time to take the photos. Start by photographing an adult peering into the jar inquisitively. If you're dealing with a method actor, remind your subject to imagine that they're seeing a miniature kid in the jar. In my sample photo, I've chosen to have my subject hold the jar up in the air, but you might try posing your adult taking a closer look, with the jar right up against their nose.

Now pose the child or children, if possible, in front of a blank wall. A uniform background that contrasts with them and what they're wearing will make it easier to select the subject later. Arrange the pose any way you like, but keep the mayo jar in the back of your mind. I posed my son Evan against a garage door.

Layer Magic

Now it's show time. Load the second photo into an image editor like Jasc's Paint Shop Pro and select the kids so we can copy them to the clipboard. If your background is fairly plain, I suggest using the Freehand tool (it looks like a lasso) and setting it to Smart Edge mode in the Tools Option dialog box. You may also want to add a subtle Feather effect to help smooth the edges. If you're using the picture of Evan, try setting the Feather to 2.

When you've set the Freehand tool to Smart Edge, you can trace your subjects by clicking at short distances all the way around them. Notice that every time you click, the Smart Edge tool automatically latches onto the nearest high-contrast edge. If your tracing accidentally veers too far away from the kids, right-click to undo your selection and try again. If you're having trouble, zoom in and make your clicks fairly close together; the further apart you click, the more room you leave the Freehand tool to make a mistake. When you get all the way around and end up where you started, double-click to fully enclose the kids.

When you've selected all of the background and none of your subjects, choose Selections, Invert from the menu to reverse the selection. You'll now have the kids in your clutches.

When you're done, copy the selection to the clipboard. In Paint Shop Pro, open the first picture (in this case jar.jpg) and then choose Edit, Paste, As New Layer. The kids will probably cover most of the picture at this point, so it's time start shrinking. Choose Image, Resize and make sure the option to "Resize all layers" is not selected. Enter a small number in the "Percentage of original" field--try 25 for starters--and click OK.

Now that the kids are reasonably small, click and drag the image onto the mayo jar. Do your subjects fit inside? If not, call up the Resize dialog box and continue tweaking until it's a good fit.

Fine-Tuning the Picture

Let's hope you got a decent picture after just a few minutes of experimenting--but there are many ways to improve on this first attempt. Notice, for instance, that in my version of the picture, Mom's fingers cover Evan. Here's what I did: I used the Freehand tool (with Smart Edge turned on) to make a second copy of just the very bottom of the jar, where Mom's fingers are. I then copied it to the clipboard and pasted it as a third layer on top of the kid, being careful to line it up perfectly with the picture of the jar and fingers underneath.

If you try this again, try to photograph both pictures with similar lighting to make the scene look more believable. Also, be careful about the angle from which you shoot the occupant of the jar; it should match the jar's perspective in the first photo. And you can add to the impression that your subject is behind glass by using the Freehand tool to make a second copy of the jar. Copy it to the clipboard and paste it as a third layer on top. By varying the transparency of this third layer, you can enhance the illusion that your subject is indeed inside the jar, not just pasted on top of it. I used that technique for an alternate version.

Dave's Favorites: Let Image-Edit & Art Tweak Your Photos

Now that you've been subscribing to this newsletter for a while, I'm confident that you can edit your digital photos pretty well. No matter what comes up, from removing red eye to cropping a picture to blurring the background, you can probably handle it. But I realize that there may be times when you'd like a professional to do it instead. Maybe you've got a really special photo that you want to print and give away as gifts. Or perhaps you know someone who isn't comfortable with image-editing programs--giving that person a gift certificate to a professional editing service might make be nice. In either case, check out a Web site called Image-Edit & Art.

This site delivers a host of professional tweaks and changes to digital photos for a small fee. Here's how it works: you upload the digital image you'd like to correct, then select from an extensive list of services. The site offers red eye removal, color adjustments, blurred backgrounds, image sharpening, old-photo restoration, wacky caricature filters... pretty much everything under the sun. Within a day, the folks at the site e-mail you a price quote. If you choose to pay, it takes a few days to get the work done.

Fees vary depending upon what you want done. Correcting the color in a badly exposed image costs $20, while removing someone from a group photo costs $35. You can add text to a photo for $10, or "glamorize" a portrait for $35. Image-Edit & Art makes it easy to pick multiple effects for a single photo from a shopping list, and it's all combined into a single price quote. The quote is created by a human, who includes an assessment of how well the edits will work, and at what maximum size you should try printing the image.

I tested the service with a $50 gift certificate in hand. I took an old photo of my daughter and asked the folks at Image-Edit & Art to perform some standard portraiture edits, including red eye reduction and blurring the background. The total cost was $32 for processing in a week (I could have had it turned around in 2 to 3 days for $48).

The bottom line? The folks at Image-Edit & Art did nice work, but let me be very clear: There's almost nothing that they do that you can't do yourself, especially if you're armed with a sense of adventure and a decent image editor. That's why I think that buying a gift certificate (yes, they sell gift certificates) for that digital-imaging neophyte in your family is the best use for the site.

Q&A: Why Do I Get Strange Colors When I Edit Pictures?

I have a problem: Often, when I try to edit a picture, I get crazy colors in my picture. I tried the invert function and it just got worse. I tried changing hue, contrast, density, and anything else I could think of, but it doesn't help. Can you suggest a fix?

--Ben Widmann, Seattle, Washington

This one stumped me for a long time, but the problem may be the number of colors you're working with. If your image or your monitor is set to just 256 colors, some edit operations may cause weird color banding and unexpected hues to appear in your photo. That's because there aren't enough colors to go around.

Check your monitor and make sure it is set for 16-bit color or higher; 24- or 32-bit color is even better. If you still get the effect, check the images you're editing. Are they 256-color GIFs? If so, try saving them as JPEG or TIFF images and try again.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions don't follow the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in your e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This week's Hot Pic: "Garden Lady," by Mike Nichols, Trinity Center, California

Mike says that he captured this picture of a lady bug while learning to use the macro mode on his new Nikon CoolPix 950. I love the fact that Mike got close enough to see the delicate texture on the bug's shell. It looks painted, not grown.

Hot Pic of the Month

Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. Our winner for May is John Smick, who sent us a beautiful portrait taken against the natural light of an open window. John has won a PC World CD-carrying case. As always, congratulations to all the other weekly winners. Your photos are excellent!

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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