PP Challenge #16 - THE RESULT

[Donald]

The counting machines have been switched off and we have a clear winner in PP Challenge #16.

It is .......................................

Tommy

with

Congratulations, Tommy.

You now have the honour of posting up a message to tell us exactly what you did and how you did it.

Tommy also gets to provide the file for the next PP Challenge (which will be along in a few days from now).

[ggt]

ooooh, I never would have thought of this.

[Sahil]

A very well imagined picture with some neat processing. Congrats, Tommy.

[jeeperman]

Very imaginative and quite clever, Tommy. Very well done, Sir.

[RockNGoalStar]

Many thanks for your votes and kind comments guys

Donald has asked me to post up here to tell you how I did it and what techniques I used.

Firstly, and most importantly I needed to find the right image of a dragonfly where the perspective was as close to that of the helicopter as possible to make the rest of the job a lot easier.

Once I had done that I opened both images in Photoshop (CS6, but I'm sure any version of PS has the tools required to do this) I drew roughly around the front end of the helicopter with the polygonal selection tool and copied it onto a new layer on top of the image of the dragonfly. I then reduced the opacity of the helicopter layer to around 60% (just so that I could see through it to help me scale and line it up correctly). I then used the transform tool to scale the helicopter cabin and make small adjustments to the perspective so that it looked right. I then put the opacity of this layer back to 100% and added a mask to it. I took the brush and with about 60% hardness, zoomed in quite close, and carefully brushed away at the mask around the helicopter body. For the runners, I used the polygonal selection tool to select different areas to make the brushing easier. I used the same techniques for the wings and tail fins towards the rear of the body of the insect.

To make the wings of the dragonfly appear to be in front of the helicopter, on this side, I simply made a selection of the overlapping section of the wings, copied it onto a new layer on top of the helicopter layer and reduced the opacity slightly until I was happy with it.

And there it is. I wish I'd done something about the ID letters being a mirror image of themselves as I flipped the helicopter image. I should have cloned them out! D'oh!

If any of you need me to clarify any of this I will be happy to do so. I am pretty sure it was the concept more than my PP skills that won this one for me but many thanks again for your votes

Tommy

[rpcrowe]

That is really a wonderfully well done and imaginitive transformation...

[RockNGoalStar]

Thanks Richard, appreciate it

[Jeff S]

Love the creativity of this image. And the explanation is certainly helpful.

[RonH]

Good one Tommy ... voted for you but hoped some would vote for me
Clever and different interpretation but you should have corrected the Reg No
Ron

[Donald]

Clever and different interpretation but you should have corrected the Reg No

Yes, the judging panel did consider whether to deduct penalty points and award them to those who had turned the registration number around so that it read correctly, as done by the Norwegian delegation ............. but we changed our minds, as the kickbacks offered were not large enough!

[RonH]

. but we changed our minds, as the kickbacks offered were not large enough!

Now now Donald ... do you seriously wish the Vikings and Trolls to invade Scotland again

[RockNGoalStar]

I think I should have been disqualified for such a blatant oversight.

[RonH]

I think I should have been disqualified for such a blatant oversight.

NOT AT ALL ... your vision was still brilliant

[Bobobird]

Very imaginative and a great edit. Congrats.

[jprzybyla]

I second what Bobo posted, well done Tommy.

[RockNGoalStar]

Thanks guys :-)