Hockey Collage

[Tom Reid]

Here's a collage I put together of each of the hockey players in our home. I did one for their team mates as well. Lots of work over the season!! The 8 x 10 prints I gave them are actually sharper than they appear here.

[John Trogdon]

I'm not really a hockey fan (I live in Florida), but those are very good. Nice work Tom.

[avdh20]

Those look great. Good Idea.

[LadyHawk]

How did you mask out the backgrounds? You did a great job!

[symes]

Good job...I really like the way these are done...I will use these as a model for next year when i get to work on some hockey..


I'm not really a hockey fan (I live in Florida), but those are very good. Nice work Tom.

John even Tampa Bay winning Lord Stanley's Cup couldn't sway you over to the fastest sport on two feet? except for the fact that they aren't playing this year trying to sort our who gets all those millions of dollars...

Cheers,

[cjm]

Very good, from Edmonton (where Gretzky won his only cups) and was a die hard hockey fan of the NHL for many years (was as in not anymore because of all the whining about MILLIONS of dollars! Greedy players). I have had more then 50,000 cards and other hockey items in my life. I gotta say. WELL DONE! They are very very very cool and the players you gave these to no doubt with charish these pictures for the rest of their life. They look like hockey cards!

[Tom Reid]

Thanks folks. I had a lot of fun doing these.

Karen...Backgound question...I opened Hue/Saturation from New Adjustment Layer. I adjusted lightness to 50%.

I can write up the full instructions later today and post them.

[Tom Reid]

Okay, here goes, long winded, but here goes for the benefit of those who haven't tried this with Photoshop...

1. Open photo to be used as background.

Adjust levels, curves, contrast, colors, etc.
Merge layers and sharpen if necessary
Select Image from menu bar then Adjustments followed by Hue/Saturation
The Hue/Saturation window appears, grab the slider for Lightness and slide to the right or select a value in the box above the lightness control. I used 50% as a starting point. Whatever value you choose select OK to apply the effect.
Save your work on this photo.
2. Open action shot you wish to place on top of background.

Copy the photo to a new page with transparent contents. To do this use the following keystrokes, ctrl a, ctrl c and then ctrl n. A new window with options will appear. Do not make any changes to the Image Size section with one exception, resolution can be bumped up if you wish, I used 300 pixels/inch. In the lower section of the window under Contents make sure Transparent is selected and then click OK
A new window appear, press ctrl v to paste the action shot to this window.
Close the original action shot.
Adjust levels, curves, contrast, colors, etc.
If you adjusted any of the above using layers, merge the layers now as without that the next steps will not work.
Sharpen the image, it helps with the next step
Now comes the fun part!! You need to cut out the player from this photo. There may be many ways to do this and if anyone has a suggestion please share it. I used the eraser tool. Using a combination of the normal eraser tool and the magic eraser tool, erase everything except the player, stick and puck if in the shot. Same can be done for a soccer player keeping the player and ball. Be careful using magic eraser tool as it sometimes bleeds into parts of the player.
After you’ve completed erasing click on the move tool icon. A box will appear around the player. If it’s not tight to all outside edges of the player it means you may have missed some light colored background. This will show up when you layer it with the background shot you first worked on so grab the eraser tool, enlarge its size and carefully move around the player. Try the move tool again until it’s tight to the player.
Save your work.
Click on the crop tool, choose 300 pixels/inch on the menu bar and crop the player. I go 300 as it gives me a bigger picture that when scaled down later in the process helps to sharpen the image.
Resave your work.
3. Using the move tool click and drag your action shot onto the background shot you first worked on.

Select edit on the menu bar, transform and then scale.
A menu bar appears showing amongst other things 100% in W and H. Click on the chain in between W and H to activate aspect ratio. Click in the box next to W, where it says 100 and change that scale to a lower number. Adjust as necessary to scale down to the appropriate size. As you are doing this you have to invision the cropping of the background shot, you may not want all of it in the final photo. Once you finish scaling click on the move tool and apply the transformation. Now you can adjust the placement of the action figure.
Once placed select the crop tool. Select the width and height you wish for the print, 300 pixels/inch and then crop away.
That gives a good collage. If you want to add a drop shadow and embossing you will need the layers window opened. If it isn’t, click on Window in the menubar and select layers.
Click on the action figure layer in the layers window
Click on the Add a layer style icon, bottom left of the layers window.
Click on drop shadow. Several options will appear in the shadows window. You’ll have to play with the numbers to get the desired effect. I used 75% opacity, 30 degrees for the angle, 19 for distance, 0 for spread and 35 for size. Left everything else as is. Click OK to apply.
Click on the Add a layer style icon again and select Bevel and emboss
Again, play with it to see what it can do. I used inner bevel for style, smooth for technique, 1000 for depth, up for direction, 6 for size and 5 for soften. Click OK to apply.
Save your work!!!
You may see some garbage left behind from your erasing job. The drop shadow and embossing helps show that!! Saving the photo as a jpg and using the healing tool can cover these up. After that work save it again using the save as command, .jpg, and bring that to the photo shop for printing.
If you use this process please share it, I love new ideas for collages.

[John Trogdon]

John even Tampa Bay winning Lord Stanley's Cup couldn't sway you over to the fastest sport on two feet? except for the fact that they aren't playing this year trying to sort our who gets all those millions of dollars...

Cheers,

You're kidding, they play hockey in Tampa Bay?. . . . just joking. I guess I've lived in Florida too long, it just don't seem right. I could never stay on the top of the water long enough to score a goal.:lol:

[bigrob]

They are great. I must try that with some rugby pics.

[PhotosGuy]

Looks good. Now comes the fun part!! You need to cut out the player from this photo. There may be many ways to do this and if anyone has a suggestion please share it. I used the eraser tool. If you have PS, take a look at this thread for how to use a Layer Mask to selectivly lighten/darken, or hide part of a pic. It's easily reversible if you decide to make a change, which the eraser tool isn't:
Airport runway shoot (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=117950)

[Tom Reid]

Good idea, done.

[prime80]

Okay, here goes...

After you’ve completed erasing click on the move tool icon. A box will appear around the player. If it’s not tight to all outside edges of the player it means you may have missed some light colored background. This will show up when you layer it with the background shot you first worked on so grab the eraser tool, enlarge its size and carefully move around the player. Try the move tool again until it’s tight to the player.


A nifty little trick I use with this type of process is to "stroke" the layer (add layer style > stroke) when I think I'm done. That way, a big red mark will appear anywhere I've missed erasing.

[Tom Reid]

Cool...thanks Prime. I see hours being saved here!!

[LadyHawk]

Thank you for letting us in on your technique, Tom. It's people like you who make this forum first rate!

[byso]

Thats top work I'll give that idea a go for my stuff.

I do wallpaper etc for the Manly sea eagles Rugby league team in Australia, official website..

Have any of you chaps used "microsoft photodraw" its a top program. Thats what I use. I tend not to erase to tight to the players. But I may give it a go.

http://www.alternateeagles.com/addins/autogallery/Gallery/2005%20wallpapers/2005-players-v1-800x600.jpg

[prime80]

[QUOTE=byso]Have any of you chaps used "microsoft photodraw" its a top program. Thats what I use. I tend not to erase to tight to the players. But I may give it a go. /QUOTE]

I've used Photodraw, Paintshop Pro, Photoshop Elements 2&3, Photoshop 5, 6, 7 & CS (waiting anxiously for CS2). I prefer Photoshop, but Photoshop Elements 3 is by far the best consumer grade editor I've used. If you haven't tried it out yet, or the earlier versions of elements turned you off, you really ought to try it. It's quite good.

[prime80]

Cool...thanks Prime. I see hours being saved here!!

Glad to help...I know that little trick has saved me a LOT of time. :)

Great pics, btw. Very nice job.

[byso]

I'll try to get hold of a copy I like Photodraw because you can move objects (seperate photos) around easily even after it's saved as a mix file, can also leave objects outside the working frame area. Is there another package that handle objects the same way?

If so I would give it a go.

I think adobe saves the jpg files better/crisper quality though.

[prime80]

In Photoshop, you would just save the different objects to different layers. Then you have complete control over placement, filters, etc. You can save it as a tiff or .psd(Photoshop native format) and still have all of your layers intact.

[PhotosGuy]

I used PhotoDraw a few years ago, but prefer PS now. PS is the industry standard & you will never go wrong if you learn it. It does have a lot of features that you will probably never use though.
If you don't have PS or Elements, try GIMP.org for a free & excellent software pgm. It has layers, lots of excellent .doc, tutorials, & forum help, too. It

has plugins to let it open Canon-RAW files directly, much like Photoshop (although not quite as slick).
There's also a gimp-fork called "Gimp-video" for video-editing, which is used quite a bit in hollywood.
There's some things you'll miss from photoshop, but none of the "important" ones. Layer effects, filter-previews on most (if not all) filters, a good

filebrowser are some of them. These may have been added since I used it last.
NOTE: The latest version only works with Linux, but the pre version that works with Windoze is also available to download. I last used a pre-pre-pre version & it was great! I teach PS, so thats the main reason that I use it.
Getting and Installing the GIMP for Windows:
http://www.gimp.org/windows/

RawShooter
http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_18/essay.html
At this point, I'd use RawShooter (also free at this time) to process RAW, but the DCraw-site, has a list of RAW plugins for Gimp.
http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/ (http://www.cybercom.net/%7Edcoffin/dcraw/)
Also see:
http://ptj.rozeta.com.pl/Soft/RawPhoto

[byso]

Thanks for that in depth response Photoguy. I get it. I'll have to make myself learn Adobe photoshop.

I have Photoshop & elements 2.0. I suppose Photodraw is so easy to use and it does most things well.

[ECHL Images]

I'm new to this forum and found this hockey collage section and figured I add some of my own.
http://www.echlimages.com/images/KeithMcCambridge.jpg

http://www.echlimages.com/images/beckford-sue%20copy.jpg

[Tom Reid]

I really like the second one ECHL Images. Good work.

[cdjr4@cox.net]

Thanks so much for sharing!! These look great!!

[vidoprof]

I love this idea. Sorry for th late reply.. but these are top notch. Tom: Thanks for the tutorial. This is fantastic. I just need to learn photoshop now to try and erase the action shot.

Have you found any of the other techniques working better for you?

[ItzBitzHair]

subscriging to keep the inst local..

nice collages

[Richtherookie]

I love the first two pictures. All i see is that the dark image of picture one, the helmet/head looks maybe out of focus? I am no pro, just my opion. But it looks different, i wish i could tell you the tech term, but blurie/not of focus is the best i can get. Other than that those are awesome. Hope i can learn to do this to my hockey shots.