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Posted on 08/03/06 6:34:36 PM |
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paul 2005
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Montage layout suggestions required.
Part of my job has me putting people's photos onto canvas. This is usually just a case of colour correction and cropping but sometimes involves more. Anyway I offered to do one free for a someone who works next door to us. It's a photo of her brother (who died recently at a young age) and a photo of his baby son who he never saw. The photo of the brother is very close and all I have is just his head and neck and a hat he was wearing. The baby photo is full length but he's in a little seat and all you can really see is his head. I'm trying to think how I can combine these two images tastefully. At the moment I just have two floating heads. I can't decide what background would be suitable. I'll probably end up printing it at 20"x16" I don't think she'd want the final image to dwell on the fact he's no longer alive. |
Posted on 08/03/06 6:39:17 PM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 7047 Reply  |
Re: Montage layout suggestions required.
Tricky one. I think the last thing you want to do here is to attempt a 'realistic' montage - in other words, don't try to show her brother cuddling the baby! It might be best to place one (or both) images in a frame of some sort: perhaps a plain white border, such as you get on Polaroid photographs. You could then make it float above the base image by adding a drop shadow to it. Good luck with this job. And do let us see the results! |
Posted on 08/03/06 9:00:38 PM |
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paul 2005
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Re: Montage layout suggestions required.
Thanks Steve. That's a great idea. 
The photo on the right looks a little awkward to me. Originally he was photographed with his sister. Their faces were pushed up together. I have a black area in his "photo". I tried to hide it by placing the baby photo over the top. It's going to be printed onto canvas and the area beyond the guides is the part that is wrapped around the edge, |
Posted on 08/03/06 9:09:30 PM |
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trinityofone
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Re: Montage layout suggestions required.
I'm not sure if this is what you want but how about bringing the son out of the photo. Close up the overlap between the two frames and add some shadow on the baby frame from the son. That way you get a dynamic image and also hide some more of the 'white' space. _________________ A happy-go-lucky chap, always dressed in black |
Posted on 09/03/06 08:24:52 AM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 7047 Reply |
Re: Montage layout suggestions required.
The cutout of the brother would be a lot less obvious if you put a blurry background in there - trees, or an interior shot, doesn't really matter. Just to blend him into the image a bit more. Like the way you've got the baby looking at him, it's a great touch. |
Posted on 12/03/06 02:24:28 AM |
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Pierre
Constructional Confabulator Posts: 637 Reply  |
Re: Montage layout suggestions required.
Tough and delicate job Paul. As steve mentioned, the cut away of the father is quite sharp; you could select teh layer, inverse selection, feather 1 or 2 pixels and hit the delete key. That with Steve's blurred background would do it. People, I repeat myself, but this forum is great. Where else can you ask delicate questions like this one and get such good feedbacks? Hats up to Steve and David. 
Pierre _________________ |