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FI: So Why Big City?

DB: ‘You know...I saw the opportunity to take a nice shot of the city. Then i knew, I can make it better'

FI: So I cant really "takeover" my city ?

DB: ‘Im sorry ’

FI: DAMNIT!

First the picture needed to be taken, I do this very low budget. Meaning only with my digital camera, and a steady set of hands (no tripod here, probably because I dont have one) before I take the first picture I line up the shot, starting at the left, and picking a reference point at the edge of the view finder, so I can move the camera for the next shot. I repeat this 4 times. This is what I take.

The Next step is to merge all of the pictures together. This is as simple as opening a new blank document and bringing in each picture into Photoshop. Then placing them in order. If the pictures were taken without much movement on location, then you should not have much of a problem placing them next to each other and having them align. Nudge and crop the images as needed.

Using a bold font (my logo) I place the text over the city. Once i have its location, I rasterize the text layer. (Making it non editable anymore)

Zooming in, using the lasso tool, you can trace the buldings. Once the entire area is selected inverse the selection ( shift+ctrl+i ). Now make sure you have the text layer selected. and hit delete. This will delete the text and begin to make it appear as if it behind the buildings in the skyline.

Now I can remove that plain white text, and add Photoshop styles to it . First making sure the text layer has a fill of 0. ( fill is under the opacity slider ). Followed by these 4 styles

Drop Shadow

Color Overlay

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

Conecting the images together the way I did, there was bound to be some seam issues. For this project in particular I just wanted to cover up the seams with thin white lines. It is possible to fix this with blur however.

*Remember taking pictures without a tripod can prove to be difficult when planning an image like this. Use reference points in the scene you are looking at to move the camera.

*FI - Fake Interviewer * DB - Drew Beynon