I need to make this poster and I unfortunately do not have a lot of shots to choose from. The kid has a lot of intense facial expressions in his shots.
I have merged the mouth area onto one shot trying to get the best combo. Can you give me your recommendation for the best option for the main photo in the poster?
Mark, I think you have it arranged pretty well. Lots of colors going on, which is giving it an unorganized feel, at least IMO. I did a version last night pretty much leaving everything right where you have it, but working mostly on just the poster's colors. I basically ended up using red text with an all-green bg, while unifying the reds to approximately one red. This, and eliminating the b/w bg knocked down the number of color contenders- not much, but it helped.
Not sure if the player would object, but I adjusted the hue of red in his shoes to match that on the neck of his jersey. I gave it an all-green stroke as well, then did red in the lettering with a texture, along with an Aurora mountain scene behind it. Lots of green, but the splashes of red seem to work okay. I can post it here if you'd like, but let me know.
Wow, Thank you for the efforts. Of course I would like to see your version. Thank you!!
Too many colors are probably due to my white balance or poster work. I tried green in the background and red in the text and it was too much for my eyes but I would love to see your version.
By the way, when I put colors in my bar etc, I went off of the official colors of the school rather than from my shot. The school colors and logo are in the following link.
Wikipedia is where I ended up when I was looking for the school colors, too. What I can't figure out is where they come up with bright green and intense red, when the bison logo has two grays, a washed-out red, white, and a washed-out black.
Below is what I came up with to throw some ideas out there. I'd wondered if going all-green would work or be too much, and couldn't resist having a look myself, lol. A load of green definitely helps take away the multi-colored appearance, but does create the floating player syndrome. Regardless of which way you go, if you keep that bg in your template, I'd consider cloning out the ceiling lights. (Pretty amazed at your face transformation work, btw.)
I also thought a hint of the local mountains and trees would give them a sense of home.
Tom, thank you for the ideas. There are some good things there.
I really like the HDR type look on the cutout. I have been looking at NIK and Topaz Adjust and I think I am going to take the dive and get one or both of those.
I also like the consistency in the colors. But, that is just a little too much green for my taste.
You have started me thinking about some things though and I appreciate it.
Here is another version that Chris Pasatieri (cmpdesignz) just sent me that I am really liking. A little less green but I like that he made the grey tones in the school logo green and outlined the text in red to standout and coordinate more with the school colors.
Thanks to both Tom and Chris for sharing your expertise with a rookie!!!
Not sure how you plan on printing these, but just a heads up on one idea: I'd done a triathlon poster for a neighbor a couple of years ago that he had printed on sheet aluminum (a *real* metallic print), and it looked awesome. Anywhere there was color, it had the look of a candy-apple paint job on a hot rod- really popped. A little pricey, unless you offset it by the cost of not having to mat and frame, if that was the intention...
i would change the background image. its too close to where it looks like thats the actual background but not close enough where it meshes just right. so right now im kinda getting the idea that he is floating. i would do maybe a full crowd shot, full court, head on basket, or a wider view so theres not that confusion between the player render and the background image.
mdalby wrote:
I am not real skilled at the merging. Is the mouth area to pronounced on my merge?
This is the original photo with the 2nd option facial expression.
Okay, I'm butting in here, but you're doing two things (well) that have been making me crazy. First you got a major distraction (the hand) out of the way and them you very nicely extracted the player from his background. How do you get such a clean cut out. I've tried a variety of tools but nothing is giving me the type of crispness I see here. Anyone with suggestions, I'd really appreciate it.
I didn't get the hand out of the way. I stole the mouth nose area of the shot that had the hand in the way and merged it onto the shot without the hand. It is really easy to do. This is the video that I used for my tutorial.
Masking is another matter. There are a variety of approaches that people use. I use the quick selection tool and then use the pen and adjust with the refine tool.
