This week’s group photo edit project from ‘Second Shotz‘ is seen below. It is of the Vancouver skyline, and was provided by group member ’Kinnigurl‘, who was also kind enough to allow me to repost her original photo here. (Thanks, Kinnigurl!).

My final edit can be seen here.

I was flummoxed as to what to do with this photo. Originally, I was going to darken all the buildings and have a single, lone office window lit, with a caption along the bottom that read simply, “Vancouver, Population 1″ (a variation of this idea survives as an element in the edit I ultimately went with). Then, I decided I was going to put faces against the side of the buildings, photomosiac-style. That turned into a desire to put giant eyeballs inside, staring balefully out of multiple windows. That image led to the the thought of the buildings as mammoth, slow-moving beasts with stern, constipated faces. Yes! I would turn the group of them into a herd of skyscraper beasts!

In a world with such buildings, they’d no doubt be best viewed through high-powered binoculars, and from a great distance. Say… Granville Island, just across the water. Not only would a view through binoculars lend itself to an interesting visual, but it would also give you plenty of time to jump in your weird, alternate-reality-based wasteland car and get the hell out of Vancouver if one of them noticed you there and started knocking down trees and sinking boats to check you out.

Then I thought, “What if through my binoculars, I could see a guy inside one of the buildings, looking back at me?” Seeing something like that would raise many questions, such as “hey, who is that guy?”, ”how’d he know I was looking at him?”, and ”did a grazing building just eat him?”

When I was searching for an image to use as my mysterious guy looking back at me through binoculars, I came across yet another guy, and he looked like he was holding a kickass photon-blaster or something. So I changed direction yet again, and ended up traveling down the path laid out below. Several people have expressed an interest in seeing the process I took to arrive at the finished product, so to those people, I say, read on. To everyone else, I say, “Sorry… lots of Photoshop ahead.” 

First, I converted the image to 1800 x 1200 resolution. Then, I performed the following steps:

• Desaturated via the ‘channel mixer’ and ‘gradient map’ adjustment layers
• Gave it a slight sepia tone via a ‘color balance’ adjustment layer
• Adjusted the levels to darken the scene, and tweak the contrast
• Added a black gradient above the clouds
• Duplicated the layer, then applied a Gaussian Blur (radius 15) to the duplicate
• From the blending mode dropdown beneath the layers tab, I chose ‘multiply’, and applied it to the duplicate layer
• Decreased the opacity of the blurred and multiplied layer down to about 40%. This gave everything a soft, hazy focus. 

I needed to zoom in, so I used the crop tool, which left me with a 1200 x 1800 portrait-oriented image. (Ideally, I should have cropped this before I did the original conversion to 1800 x 1200, as I was essentially losing some detail by shrinking it, then enlarging a portion of it again. However, it didn’t appear to have degraded, so I left it as is).

• After desaturating him and matching his color to the active image, I imported Photonic Flak Cannon Binocular Guy over from a separate multilayered .PSD file, where I’d already done some post-processing work on him, and positioned him over the buildings. I wanted it to look as though he was being viewed through the rifle scope of my own, hopefully larger and even more accurate, Photonic Flak Cannon.
• I created a new layer and positioned a black circle to represent the scope’s sight. I reduced the opacity of the black circle down so that I could easily see mine enemy, who will from this point forward be known simply as “Bino”.
• I then applied a layer mask to the black circle layer, and chose ‘reveal all’. Using the black brush tool on the layer mask, I masked certain areas of the circle, revealing the Bino beneath.

• I created a layer mask on the original (rectangular) Bino layer, then made the layer with the black circle the active layer. Using the magic wand selection tool, I clicked in the area outside the circle, which selected everything on that layer, except the circle. Then I activated the Bino layer, clicked on its layer mask, and used the black brush tool to mask according to the circle selection. This caused everything outside of the circle to disappear. 
• I started working out the font, text, and placement of the title. I used the font ‘Mom’s Typewriter’, which I’m currently in the process of bludgeoning to death from overuse. For further evidence supporting that statement, note its frequent occurrences throughout our blog banner above (at the time of this writing, anyway).

• After infringing on Sony’s Playstation logos, I played around with the levels some more, and everything started looking pretty dark. Too dark, actually.  
• I used the clone tool to fill in the white area below the hinge of the cannon. This left an obviously repeating pattern, which I didn’t attempt to blend, because I thought it kind of worked, in context.

• I added a ‘color balance’ adjustment layer and yellowed up the scene.
• I used a levels adjustment layer to lighten it to taste.
• Then, I grabbed a free texture that I thought would work to achieve the border and mottled effect I was after. (Thanks to ‘Ghostbones‘ for the great texture).

• I rotated the texture and resized it so that it would be as wide as my image, but not as tall, as it needed to fall short of the borders at the top and bottom of the image.
• I placed it in its own layer above all but the color balance adjustment layer, and chose ‘overlay’ from the layer blending modes.

 Next, I started to work on some of the more subtle details.

• I duplicated the text layer for ‘Population 2′, dropped it behind the original, and increased the font size by a few clicks.
• I used the move tool to lower it.
• I decreased the layer opacity of the new text layer so that it faded behind the original.
• I attached a layer mask, and using a highly-feathered brush tip, masked select areas of the faded text so that it would appear non-uniform. I wanted it to look almost like a shadow cast on the clouds/smoke in the background.

• I opened a new image file and selected a size of 2 x 6 as my resolution. I left the bottom half transparent, and I made the top half the dark mustard color in the shadows of one of the buildings.
•  I converted it into a pattern, and selected the bucket fill tool, and changed the source from ‘foreground’ to my new pattern.  

Note: Had I chosen black instead of sampling an actual color from my image, the resulting scan lines wouldn’t have blended properly with the overall color of the scene.

• I created a new layer over Bino, and selected a circle that roughly mirrored the scope’s sight. Then, I filled in the inside of the circle with the pattern, giving it the effect of TV scan lines, or Flak Cannon Scope Lines in Bino’s unfortunate case. I lowered the opacity until it looked right.

• Using the Polygonal Lasso selection tool, I made a couple of quick, triangular shapes above the right-hand building’s roofline. I feathered them by about 3 pixels. Then, I created a ‘levels’ adjustment layer and lightened the contents of the selection to create a beacon/spotlight effect, reaching skyward. 

• I created a new layer, and dropped it behind the main image.
• I filled it with clouds using ‘Filter/Render/Clouds’.
• I added a layer mask and specified ‘reveal all’. Using the black brush tool with a highly feathered tip about 300 pixels wide, I switched to the main image layer and masked areas around the boats and the water’s foreground, exposing the clouds beneath. This broke up the sharp, clear foreground and gave it a hazy, ’smoke or get smoked’ look.



Jill had a great idea to have one of the boats on fire, and it would have made a good visual to have a plume of dark smoke drifting off to the right side of the scene, indicating carnage, scorched earth, and reckless abandon. Plus, it would kind of balanced out the action/elements, as there’s really not too much going on in the lower half of the image. I may work this in at a later date.

• Next, I added white lines and circles for the sighting elements to the scope. 

• I used a combination of previously described multilayering, masking, and opacity fading on these elements to achieve the final look.
• I added a solid ring of color around the scope circle and applied a gaussian blur with a radius of 25.
• I then color-matched the blurred ring to the rest of the image, and decreased its opacity so that it was barely visible. This effect acted as a nice transition between Bino’s circle and the normal-scale building surrounding him. 

I don’t guess ”Vancouver: Population 2″ would ever make it as an actual multi-player game, as you can only have two players, by definition. I altered the Playstation logos a bit in order to fend off all the hungry lawyers from the Sony Corporation who no doubt read this blog, and have just been waiting for me to misstep.

And finally, the late night, finished product: