Before & after - memories for our granddaughter

[swalkr]

Our son passed away in 1999 at the age of 27 of cancer. His daughter, our granddaughter misses him terribly. She was an attendant at her high school's homecoming event last year. Her father would have been so proud. I decided to try to memorialize this event, even though her father couldn't be there. I am going to work on this some more probably with a different background, but this was my first attempt to put two images together and have them on a different background. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

http://picasaweb.google.com/walker65807/JonAndKyleeTogether

[Russinator]

Swalkr: I'm sorry for your loss. It had to be terrible to lose a child [for you] and a father for your granddaughter.

I love what you did with the two pictures.

Russ

[kevq]

Great job with the blending.
What a wonderful gift for your granddaughter.
Kev.

[Hypnomedi]

Suzanne,

The thought is great and she will love it !
But the blendings need a lot of work.
For a start, you show the pictures in a very low size.
Even than , I can see the cutting and pasting. (no feather)
something to look is the sunshine (and shadows if there are any)
The father stands in sunlight and daugther has non (inside).
In a smaller picture it is less visable but if the picture is much larger
it is very good visable.
see separate pictures.
A very good thing is that the poses match great and that help a lot.
background is very personal, maybe better in front of bushes and trees,
flowers?
If you want some help you may send the pictures at full size !! to me.
The larger the pictures,the better you can adjust.
don't enlarge them or you loose a lot quality if you not used to do it.
only the full size as they have been token.

If you want to do it yourself, use a softer brush for the selection mask.

Johan

[Wendy]

Hi ...

I think that you have done really well with the images ... because they were taken at different times and are at different resolutions its never possible to get a perfect match but you have done really well with it :)

She will love it .. and will be so proud that you did it for her :)

Wendy

[uniqcrafts]

Nice job! What did she think of it?

[JuliaM]

Nice job with the picture. I'm sure your granddaughter will truly love it; it's something she'll treasure.

JuliaM

[AngelicKim]

Suzanne, so sorry to hear about your son. You have done a great job so far on the two photos. I am sure your grand daughter will treasure it forever.

[nkeevers]

Suzanne, so sorry to hear about the loss of your son. You did a great job putting them together in one picture. She must be so pleased to have a picture of the two of them at her homecoming.

[Patty]

You did a great job. I think your granddaughter will be pleased.

Could you explain to me how you did it. I have a few photos that I would love to add someone too.

[swalkr]

You did a great job. I think your granddaughter will be pleased.

Could you explain to me how you did it. I have a few photos that I would love to add someone too.

I used the magnetic lasso to select the granddaughter on her photo, cntrl J to put that selection on it's own layer. I did the same with our son's photo. I then picked out a background, tiled (Window>images>tile) all three photos and used the move tool to move the two selections to the background. I had to play around with the sizing so it really looked like they were standing together. Before I give it to our granddaughter, I'm going to try to change the background to a gymnasium - to make it seem more real. That is where she accepted the homecoming attendant award. I've searched for a suitable gym background, but haven't come up with anything yet. Any suggestions from anyone?

By the way, I want to thank Diana and everyone else who has put me onto so many tutorials. I've printed them out and added them to my stack of "important papers". Sometimes I just do one thing with one tutorial, so by the time I'm ready to do it again, I have to go back to the tut again. I also write notes on the printed copies, because that helps me remember what font, color, size and etc I used before. Right now I'm in the process of making 16x20 posters of our retirement 6-year travel experiences in our motorhome. We visited all states except Hawaii (motorhomes are notorious for not floating :eek:), but we did go to Hawaii by plane this past spring. We are now settled down in our former hometown and loving again living in a "stick house".

Walmart will make the posters for about $11, but it takes about two weeks to get them. Staples will make them for about $8, but I want to check out the paper quality before I take the posters there for printing.

I hope I haven't missed anything in the above steps to make the composite. If I have, someone can sure correct me.