Photoshop to the rescue!

Tonight I tackled a tricky project for my friends at the Peoria Ballet. Their performances of Snow White start in just over one week, and they are scrambling to put together the program for the show. Part of that program is a photograph of the featured level 4 dancers. However, when the photographer came to take the picture, one dancer was missing. There is no time for a retake, because the program must get to the printer on time. There's no option other than to digitally manipulate the image using a photo taken for the Nutcracker performances in December 2012.

I do stuff like this all the time, mostly for fun or personal reasons--but this case was particularly challenging because of all the things going on in the Nutcracker photo. That's some troublesome masking. Also, bear in mind I am using Adobe Creative Suite 3 on a five-year-old MacBook. This stuff became a lot easier with CS5 than it was back in the Stone Age of CS3.

It took a few hours as well as a few days' worth of patience, but I am proud of what I ended up with. See below. (Note: I am not the photographer of these images)


The original photo for the Snow White program, missing one dancer

 

The source photo containing the missing dancer (front row, first one in from right), from five months ago

The final version of the Snow White picture, now ready for program inclusion.