Here’s a magazine cover baby announcement we did recently.  It was a really fun picture to start with.  Just a little work to make it feel like a magazine cover image:

• Darkened the background to make the subject pop out even more, and extended the top to go higher for the sake of the magazine proportions.  As it was, we had to put a solid color bar at the bottom (which we would rather not have had to do) because the bottom of the image was cropped in a way that was difficult to extend very far.
• Added some saturation to the purple coat, face, shoes, and did a little dodging and burning on the face to bring out the shadows more.
• Made a mask of the top of the head so that it could cut out part of the magazine title.

Here’s a movie poster announcement we did recently.

I think it turned out extra cute, due largely to a great picture to start with.  The picture was taken by Ashlee Robinette (see her photo blog here: sincere-snapshots.blogspot.com).

The only things I changed in the picture were things that would help it integrate better into the poster layout and design – not things that make it a better photograph.  Here’s what I did:

• We decided to go with a lavender color overall, so I just did a hue/sat color shift on the background on both sides, to get them both into the same color range, and added a darkening gradient to the right side to make it feel more like the left side.
• To give a little taller proportion to the picture, so it would fill more of the tall movie poster, I extended the top of the hat with the clone tool.  This was also to allow for some room to fade out at the top, without going into the face area.
• The fade out mask at the top was painted with one of the irregular-shaped brushes that comes with Photoshop.
• The blanket at the bottom was brightened to make it easier to fade out to white.
• Because the background color changed from green to purple, the whites of the eyes looked strange having a green cast to them, so I color shifted those towards purple as well.
• To create the flourish of leaves behind the title, I used the leaf-shaped brush in Photoshop, and messed around with the scattering properties until I got something that felt random enough, yet gave me control enough to keep it just in some areas.  Most of those leaves ended up working in just one or 2 strokes of the brush.
• One other fun thing we tried for the first time was to use a “film festival” seal, to add a little more of a movie poster feel.  It’s a little on the small side, because of how the layout worked out, but it worked pretty well, and I’d like to use them more often.

It’s so fun and rewarding to work with great pictures!

I don’t usually talk about movies that are out or coming out on this blog, but I’m making an exception on this one because it’s that good.  How To Train Your Dragon is, in my opinion, the best animated movie Dreamworks has released, and one of the best animated movies any company (yes, even including Pixar) has put out.  If you haven’t seen it yet, take the opportunity during your Spring Break.  It’s a classic like E.T. that will be remembered for years to come.  The 3D is very well done, the character animation is charming, and the story will keep you engaged the whole way through, and the music is great.

It has gotten a 98% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com.  If you follow that sort of thing, you’ll know that just doesn’t happen, especially for animated movies.  I’m definitely not one to care what the critics think generally, but when 98% of them agree it’s a winner, that probably means something.

To be completely upfront, I worked on this movie for 2.5 years, doing visual effects work.  But that’s not why I think it’s great.  In fact many times I think a movie I’ve worked on a lot is worse than most people do, just because I’ve seen it so much.  I really want to see this movie do well so that more studios (including Dreamworks) will take notice and make this kind of classic movie, rather than so much of the silly, but easily forgotten fare that is churned out so much of the time.

So go see it if you haven’t, and take your family with you.  You’ll be glad you did.

(And let me know what you thought in the comments!)

This picture is an example of where you have to just take a picture fast, while you have the moment, and you don’t have time to adjust the background or you’ll miss your chance.  Sometimes it’s just easier to come in with Photoshop afterwards in these cases.

Here are the things done to enhance the image:

• Cloned out the restroom sign in the background so it wasn’t distracting
• Recolored the front left wall to be the same color as the rest of the walls (again, to not be distracting, and pull your eye away from the focal point)
• Brought up shadows in general a bit, and then painted some subtle brightness on their faces with a soft big brush.