Movie promo to wallpaper (free HQ wallpaper inside)

[Greg-J]

My inet went out tonight for about an hour so I decided to take a break and do something fun. Something a little challenging but not so difficult I couldn't finish it before the end of the night.

I came across this shrek wallpaper (http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=251&stc=1&d=1178879285) the other day and thought it would be a nice layout background. I don't have a layout site or make them to sell them, but sometimes I like to just make them and forget about them. Just for the fun of being creative.

One thing that I obviously didn't want was the fine print and publishing logos plaster on it, so I went about cleansing the wallpaper. By cloning, mirroring and throwing on an overlay I was able to get rid of everything I didn't want and the end result is probably (almost) exactly what it looked like before they put their branding all over it. A comparison below:

The original:
http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=251&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1178879149 (http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=251&d=1178879149)

The cleansed version:
http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=252&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1178879180 (http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=252&d=1178879180)



Well that's what I wanted to do and unfortunately it only took a few minutes and I was still feeling creative, so I decided to make it a 1920x1200 wallpaper out of it. 1280x1024 is a far cry from where I wanted to be though. Extending the height was obvious and needed no creativity, but extending the width was something that sounded fun.

I started with a canvas 2000px wide and 1024px tall (again, my concern wasn't the height at this point), centered my cleansed version of the original and started working outward.

The most difficult part was using the little hill and foliage I had to add on another 700 pixels of hillside, but fortunately the canvas lent itself well to the objective. A lot of cloning, stamping, mirroring, more cloning and stamping and a couple overlays and I ended up with a 2000x1024 finished product that I'm overall pretty happy with. If you look closely you'll notice duplicate objects, but for the most part it looks completely organic and only someone looking for imperfections would notice any.

Here's a link to the almost finished product:
http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=253&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1178879226 (http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=253&stc=1&d=1178879285)


Now just suck in the sides, extend the top, a little fill and some blur later and I was done. I did spend some time and fix the artifacts around their feet and in the background from the original compression, but there wasn't much to do at this point.

Finished 1920x1200 wallpaper:
http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=254&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1178879269 (http://www.myspacepros.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=254&stc=1&d=1178879285)



This wasn't really a community challenge, but more of a personal challenge. I used to do a lot of composition work - making a scene from a half dozen or more random images - but it's been awhile since I've done any photo (or not-so-photorealistic in this case) retouching. All in all I'm quite happy with the outcome. So... my challenge to you is to step outside your comfort zone and do something that intimidates you just a little. Learn that tool you haven't got around to playing with.




If you accept the challenge, please post it in this section. Make your own thread so people can comment on it and give you feedback.




Lastly, feel free to use any image attached to this post for whatever you want. All I ask is that you let me know what it's being used for so I can check it out.



*images attached to post

[rize]

omg very nice! i rly like the finished product.. great job editing ;)

[hotmonkee]

great job. you should be a designer and sell layouts.

[Greg-J]

I figured it would take a designer to appreciate the detail work :detective:

I wouldn't have the time to create layouts if I wanted to, but thank you.

[Poppet]

Looks great :) I wouldn't have the patience.. I'd make a big mistake, and would be oblivious to it until I was near the end of finishing. :P Good work.

[Jordan]

That's great work Greg, really amazing. I can't do anything near that complex, but I can do some basics I guess.

See where you extended the width and basically made an extra part of the scene at the far sides...the 'horizon' - the line between the land and the reflection, is a bit sharp. I'm going to attempt to do something like this, so if I ran into that problem how would I fix it?

[ricester007]

cool stuff real nice work greg keep it up

[JCs]

Fantastic job Greg.
I hate trying to edit large images.

[Greg-J]

That's great work Greg, really amazing. I can't do anything near that complex, but I can do some basics I guess.

See where you extended the width and basically made an extra part of the scene at the far sides...the 'horizon' - the line between the land and the reflection, is a bit sharp. I'm going to attempt to do something like this, so if I ran into that problem how would I fix it?
You could soften the horizon by outlining 1 to 2 pixels above and/or below it along the entire horizon and Gaussian Blur it anywhere from .5 to 1.5 pixels depending on the look you were going for.

You might also outline the entire reflection and press Ctrl+J (duplicate selection) and in that new layers blending properties choose a white to white gradient overlay and adjust the opacity to fade into it more gradually. To soften the horizon you could also use an outer glow or outer shadow set to white/lighten and play with the settings.

I made the horizon abrupt on purpose, but I can definitely see how you might want it softer so try the things I mention above.