More photo revisions

I spent the whole week of afternoons fixing up even more of my earlier work depicting the Barefoot "family."  I did these after reviewing printed versions of these Photoshop pictures that I have displayed in the house where I live; you can look at many of these printouts on two YouTube videos I have made (my channel has links to both of them).

In the leadoff position is the "Showdown at Las Positas" movie poster honoring Bryson's love for Westerns.  The "after" picture is noticeably better as Bryson is shown in a natural pose for the cameras riding his horse.  I did my best to show the same thing in "before," but it looked very weird, as if I was depicting a lifesize version of a poorly-drawn sports-team logo.  As before, the clothes came from the Party City store online; however, instead of standing it up and trying to make it work somehow, I went online and retrieved a shot of a show jumper at an equestrian event.  The jumper represents the pose that would work the best for placing Bryson's face in place of the Party City model.  Cloning was used for the difference between the Party City standup picture and that of the equestrian.

The next "before" and "after" replaces the license plate that is part of the "promo" of season 2 of What the Buck?, the "reality comedy" starring Hambone.  I have changed the inscription on the plate from "BLOW ME" to the more family-friendly "MUDG1RL"; obviously, the "1" replaces the letter "I."  Also of note is that the plate location is flush left instead of centered.




Finally, I have taken the red blush off of Little Jack's look in the 15-person hunting party photograph, and he now looks closer to the What the Buck? season 1 picture.   It took four different adjustment layers (hue and saturation, brightness and contract, levels, and curves) to achieve this.

"Official" Barefoot family photo: Before and after

One great thing about continuing to work in Adobe Photoshop is that I can always find a way to improve my work.

When I created close-up pictures of "the 13" not too long ago - as the first page of their respective sections in my upcoming photo book - I realized that I could use the same "pictures" I made in replacing the originals in the montage I originally created in 2012.  At that point, I had just returned to ABC Adult School and I had yet to learn many of the tips and tricks to make great Photoshop work.  I had barely even heard of the magic wand tool, adjustment layers, and cloning, all of which have served me well in projects since.  In addition, some of my characters had yet to be fully developed, which meant the clothes they wore - and even their body types - did not match up to what they would truly be like.

Anyway, I decided to transfer the porch photos to the original family photo panorama.  One of the first things I noticed was that all the graphics and pictures I used at first were in a layer called "picture," since it was reproduced from a JPEG copy.  (The original was wiped out by the ABC Career Technical Center, at my request, early in 2013.)  The copy was low-quality and blurry when zoomed in.  Eliminate that layer and the country home backdrop stayed intact.  (Funny, that's like the neutron bomb concept.)  Then I dropped in smaller versions of the porch photos.  I'll show you both, then explain further changes I made:

BEFORE

AFTER

Now for the other significant differences:

• The top text is moved to the left and closer to the center of the picture.
• Harvey, the best athlete in the family, now wears the replica football jersey, while Ralph - whose various roles include hunter, fisherman, and preacher, now has a dark green T-shirt with a drawing of a buck (adult male deer) and the words "BOW TO THE BOW" above it, as I mentioned last week.
• Ralph and Jennifer now have, respectively, a cap and sun bonnet hat.
• Popeye's cap now has the corporate logo of Bass Pro Shops instead of the simple "Popeye" script.
• Also as I mentioned before, the footprint on the logo of some of the clothes now points left to right instead of right to left and represents the family farm instead of just the clan in general.
• The Barefoot house sign has smaller lettering and footprints on either side going opposite ways.  (Those footprints are courtesy of chiropractor Billie Barefoot's office in suburban Phoenix.)
• Bryson no longer has skin coming out of one side of his body, making for a "healthier" look.  He also moves closer in to his mother and brothers, the result of the staircase leading to the home being narrowed.
• Hambone now has a pink tank top with the farm logo, rather than a gray shirt with a mythical radio station's.  She and Bobby Ray also don't look as thin as before.

I hope these are the last changes I'll ever have to make, and that the new version - which will be on my book's cover - will serve as the appearances of record for my 13 "family members."

A band "picture" seven years in the making

Just a few minutes ago, I completed a very important photo montage to me.

Seven years ago, in my original book The Buddy Wayne Chronicles, I unveiled the Spears Family Band.  Based in the foothills of east-central Kentucky, between Lexington and the western Appalachian Mountains, this family is keeping the bluegrass music traditions alive.  Central to that is its beautiful backup banjo player and lead singer, Brittany Raylene.

I have given the names of the band members on several occasions, including the book and an "interview" I did with the singer/songwriter.  (Yes, Brittany Spears is her real name, but I have an alternate stage name in order to make her more realistic.)  I have also brought you the story of how Brittany became B.W.'s one true love, so much so that he dumped his first wife in order to gain something better.

Now for the first time, you can see what they would look like.  (I hope that I got their instruments right, if not please correct me in the space below.)

From left to right are Bradshaw, the fiddler; Bunch, the mandolin player; Brashears, a cool-looking string guitarist; Brittany; Breckinridge (the group's founder also known as "Grandpa Breck"), lead banjo player; and Blanton, Jr., the bass guitarist.  Blanton's father, Blanton, Sr., has also played with the band but I have decided not to show him here.  Blanton and Bunch are Brittany's brothers, while Brashears and Bradshaw are first cousins.  "Grandpa Breck" is the elder Blanton's father and Blanton, Jr.'s and Brittany's grandfather.

It's also worth noting - and I may have done it here somewhere before - that Brittany isn't the only parent in the family group.  Bunch and his wife have a daughter, Brielle.  She is three years old, while Blanton Elizabeth ("Lizzie"), B.W. and Brittany's daughter, is not quite a year old.

How it all came together: Four of the six people are actually members of a band of students at Wheeling Central High School in West Virginia, while the other two are with the Umpqua Valley Bluegrass Band in Oregon.  I placed Brittany's face on top of the clothes worn by one of the high school students.  Three of the six faces (Bunch, Brittany, and Breckinridge) had to be modified by use of various adjustments layers to reduce their bright red looks.

Another random photo

I promised my friends at the506 a picture of the site of a proposed 20,000-seat sports and entertainment arena in Las Vegas.  But as you may recall, only pictures with a URL address can be uploaded there.  So here is the picture of the site, which is on the far end of the New York-New York hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Happy Mother's Day!

Best of greetings from four of my favorite characters, enjoying themselves at a quilting bee!

(Source for original photo: Picture taken and displayed at a blog affiliated with a living history park in Michigan)

More porch photo previews

Here are three more of the individual family "pictures" I have created in advance of my upcoming photo book.

First up is Bobby Ray, which I resaved on Monday as promised.  As with his brother Buddy Wayne, Bobby now has a resized head to fix proportional problems that existed before.  Also, as with his wife Jennifer, he is modeling the new Barefoot Family Farm crest which replaced the original crest and represents the family business.

As with his two brothers, Bryson also had an issue with head-and-body proportion.  I had to go back to the original picture which I had saved earlier, create a separate selection of the head and reduce it, and put it back on Bryson's body.   (I used the eraser tool to get rid of most of the original head.)  I also got rid of a torso that seemed to protrude from the rest of his body; this was the consequence of using a washed-out video image of Tim Woods - from the reality series Moonshiners, on Discovery Channel - which had that look.

Finally, there's a three-way costume change involving all three of Popeye and Annie's children.  Here, I will present what Ralph looks like now.  In the official group picture, Ralph is wearing a football jersey, but now I have him in a camouflage pattern T-shirt that better reflects one part of his love for the outdoors, his passion for bow hunting.  The caption I wrote, "BOW TO THE BOW," is an example of a homonym, two words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations.  The first word is a verb meaning to submit (pronounced like "how") and the second refers to the weapon used in bow hunting (pronounced like "no").  The "picture" of a deer is actually taken from a photo of the grave containing the body of Burness Brister of Vidor, TX.  (Ironically, his nickname was "Bubba," as in my character Bubba Brister.)

What I was able to save from the back porch photos

When I created this page, I wanted to show three family members whose photos I modified for the back porch photos that I am making for the book: Buddy Wayne, Bobby Ray, and Jennifer.  Unfortunately, I cannot show B.W.'s new "picture" at this time.  When I opened the file to put onto this page, it was shown only by an icon instead of an actual photo.  This was one of four saved on Wednesday, and somehow the part of the flash drive it went into was corrupted.  I could only save one of them, which was B.W.'s.  All I can do now is return to class on Monday, open the original file, and save it again.  Then this time I will have to open it immediately to make sure a picture shows up.  It had never happened to me before and again I didn't realize this in advance.

The photo of Buddy Wayne is corrected from the one I put up last week.  This time, he looks more natural, with more rounded shoulders and a head size in better proportion to the rest of the body.

As for Jennifer, I did a lot more work:

• In the original group shot, she has blue-tinted sunglasses and somewhat lopsided hair.  Look at her now: she has a more rounded hairstyle and not only no sunglasses, but no glasses at all.  It's attributable to the second photo being taken later in the day and away from the earlier bright sunlight.  I used the clone-stamp tool to get rid of the glasses from the "Brandy and Aaron" picture I wrote about in this post over spring break.
• I also improved her hair; to cover up a dark spot in the middle, I made selections from either side and reshaped them until they covered entirely.
• The shirt has the footprint in the reverse direction from the official family picture.  The reason: Several months after I created it, I made an entirely new logo for the farm.  What I did was brush out the original footprint - itself modified from one that came from a "family crest" design I made courtesy of says-it.com - and replace it with a version of the logo for Barefoot's Auto Mart in Dunn, NC.  Also, whereas the crest originally said "INNOCENT AND FREE" at the bottom, it now reads "FAMILY FARM."