Comments on: Making of Moonlight Mirage Part 2: The Photo Illustrations

By: LeadMare

LeadMare — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 14:39:43 +0000

Stargazer, unfortunately Photoshop is an expensive program, but I believe you can download a copy and try it free for 30 days. Here’s the link:

http://www.adobe.com/special/try_buy/trial_availability.html

By: Stargazer

Stargazer — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:33:08 +0000

That is amazing how you did that! I’ve always wanted to be able to do that! Question: How do you get photoshop on your computer? Do you have to download it?

By: Madelaina

Madelaina — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:53:23 +0000

Thanks heaps LeadMare, your answer really helped,and the sites you’ve provided can come in really handy too. Thanks so much for that too.

By: LeadMare

LeadMare — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:27:18 +0000

Thanks everyone–glad you like this behind the scenes series. If there’s anything else you’re curious about, let me know. ;)
Julia, I’m currently using Photoshop CS2, although CS3 is the latest version. Don’t know how Photoshop CS compares to Photoshop Elements, but it’s great you have a photo editing program to experiment with. Have fun!

Madelaina, great questions. I created the border in Photoshop a while back using various painting tools (if you want to know how the border was created, that’s probably another blog). For Mirage, I simply copied the border into the file. Photoshop has a feature that allows you to have multiple layers in an image, almost like working with pieces of a collage. Each of the elements in this image–the background, shadows, Mirage, the border–are on a layer, which allows me to manipulate each one separately. The border is on the top layer so it masks anything behind it. For the background, I used the ‘hand tool’ to move that layer around on the digital canvas until I was happy with the position of the caravans relative to Mirage. Photoshop has many transformation tools (rotate, scale, skew, distort, perspective, etc.) under the ‘edit’ menu that can be applied to each layer individually, or multiple layers at the same time. You can also select part of a layer and apply a transformation.

PhotoshopCAFE has a good tutorial that explains the basics of layers: http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/layers/intro.htm

And many more free tutorials here: http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tut_photo.htm

Hope this answers your questions!

By: SB

SB — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:24:53 +0000

That’s very informative and helpful!

By: Madelaina

Madelaina — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:33:00 +0000

Wow LeadMare, that is amazing! I’ve always wondered how you can make pictures so well! Thanks a lot for this blog, now maybe my attempts at making horse photo manipulation would improve. But I’ve got some questions: How do you add the border? And where do you go to rotate and scale the image so the background can be moved upwards and cut off from the picture like that? Thanks LeadMare! :D

By: Marisa

Marisa — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:03:35 +0000

This is amazing thanks for telling us about this!

By: PonyPrincess

PonyPrincess — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:42:08 +0000

Wow, LeadMare this is cool! I was wondering how the picture was made. I am very glad the people let you use Gracie to make Mirage! ;)

By: Sweetie

Sweetie — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:31:20 +0000

Wow she’s so cute!!!

By: Julia

Julia — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:23:50 +0000

LeadMare, this is so cool! I’ve been experimenting with Photoshop and I havn’t gotten to far with it yet. I use Premiere Elements 4, so I was wondering which program you use?

Thanks, all the pictures you create for the blogs are fabulous. I don’t think they would be the same without them. :)