Scale

[monkey_wrench]

Ok im not sure on where to post this so im gonna shove it in here

so basically im doing my final project at Uni on Photography of 80's LP designs for example im using the Blondie cover

http://www.perrific.com/cds/covers/blondie.jpg

and with this im going to dress up as the guys in the shot and blondie of course and using photoshop cut the heads off and replace them as me in a black wig and a blonde wig and make up?!? ya dig?

anyway i was wondered on how i would get the correct scale so that my head(s) wouldnt look too big or stretched ? is it gonna be trial and error or is there a way of working this out???

please help me out!!!

[monkey_wrench]

please guys im really in need of help

[PacAce]

What you would need to do is take your pictures and size them to almost the same resolution as the image you are going to modiy. You can then cut off your heads from your pictures and paste them on to the original picture. If you have a photo editor like Photoshop or Ulead PhotoImpact, you can resize the individual heads to match the scale of the original image.

[CappuccinoDavid]

Well at least you pick a great group...

[ron chappel]

I've done such things before but can't remember exactly how.
The important thing as Leo says,is to resize the picture of your own head so that when you paste it on the cover it's the right size (it get's confusing because by default photoshop shows images onscreen at whatever size fits the screen-they might not be at their true size)
Now i'm starting to remember abit-after pasting your head on the cover,use the "move tool" (top right in the toolbox ) to place it in the right spot.
**You then have to flatten the image to make it stick! ** ( >layer >flatten image )
Other hints i can think of- try to make sure your image has the same colour ballance/cast as the cover and also approximately the same sharpness.It would be easy to have your head looking much sharper than the cover making it look less real

Im not sure if all photoslop programs are the same in the way to achieve this (very likely not-thankyou adobe..so much for elements being an entry to CS...)

Oops,sorry,got carried away there :) .I just hate the way they design these programs
Anyway you should probably post this in the image editing forum -there are quite a few brilliant useres around that know all the methods and tricks
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=18

[Moments]

If you can get the sizes of each image close to each other, it would be best but not completely necessary depending upon how the final image will be used, printed, size, paper etc. You do need the resolutions to be the same though.

When you drop in each of your heads into the original album covers image the will each become a new layer in Photoshop. Move the layer of the new head into the approx area that you want it in. Then reduce the opacity of that layer so as to see the original head through the new layered head.

Then in edit / transform, you can adjust the scale of the layer of the new heads. If you hold down the shift key while adjusting the scale, it will stay in proportion and the heads will still look correct. Get it to the size of the original heads on the cover. Then bring the opacity of the new heads layers to 100% to cover the original album covers heads. I would then remove any background that I did not want in the new layers of the heads via a layer mask.

Have fun.

[Jon]

You'll need to do a bit of playing around to get reasonable perspective as well; at a minimum you'll need to approximate the lens/distance combination (allowing for "crop factor"; that was probably taken with a 2-1/4) and be in the same relative position in the FoV as the person you're substituting for. Notice that the side of each person's face that's closer to the image axis tends to show a little more than the outer side.