Portrait Transformation Project

Project Title: Old-Hollywood in Modern-Day NYC

1. My concept for this project was to take an "Old-Hollywood" scene and/or moment, and place it in a modern New York City setting. I specifically transformed my sister into an Old Hollywood actress by using different Photoshop techniques. Overall, I wanted to created a sharp contrast between the glamour of the past and the modernity of the present.

2. I am very happy with the results. This wasn't really representative of my original concept. In fact, I was pretty indecisive when it came to coming up with a concept. At first, I wanted to do a genre of fantasy, and do a kind of parallel universe. Then, I changed my ideas a few more times. I didn't come up with this final concept until I really understood the pictures that I took of my sister, as well as how she could blend with my background photo. My "Old-Hollywood" dress, which was already in black and white gave me the idea to just keep the image type and color consistent. I then decided to add an old-fashioned camera crew to sort of make it like a movie set or something. I liked how my concept came together, and I think the results look good!

3.

Final Project 

My Original Background Photograph

Original Photograph of My Sister

4. First, I needed to find a dress to put my sister's head on top of. Once I found the black dress, I saved it in Photoshop, and began to remove the model's head. I used the quick selection tool, and outlined the body. Then, I copied and pasted the body onto my original background photo.

Next, I put my sister's picture into Photoshop, and with the quick selection tool, cut out her head and pasted it on my project document. Next, I selected the layer of her head, and used the black and white filter to match the body with the dress. Then, I used brightness and contrast to make my sister's black and white skin tone match the arms that came from dress. Then, I attached the two layers to make one full body.

My next step was to add my next piece to the project. I searched Google Images for a camera crew from an Old-Hollywood set. I copy and pasted the photo into Photoshop, and used a layer mask to erase the extra parts of the background that I didn't need. Then, I cropped the layer to adjust the size so it would be proportional to my sister's body.

My last step was changing the ground of the background. My original image was taken from a rooftop, and there was a table and chairs on the ground. These objects crowded my image a little too much, so I decided to find a clean floor for my figures to stand on top of. I found an image, and with the quick selection tool, I cut out the floor and pasted it under the layers of my figures. This created a cleaner and more focused background layer.