INTRODUCTION:

Use the cropping/selecting skills you learned in the action sequence to create your own hybrid animal in Photoshop. The final image should look plausible, and realistic, as if featured in National Geographic. The key point to this exercise is for you to get comfortable with layer masks and adjustment layers

BASIC REQUIREMENTS:

You will need to create 2 Animals that look REAL or PLAUSIBLE
– Put them into a NEW location (Choose a new background for them)

TIP: By reducing the size of the animal into a new background, imperfections are less obvious!

Add a short write-up on your animal as part of your image

STEPS:

• Find animal images that could go together – Spend no more than 30 minutes browsing & downloading your image
• Make sure ALL your images are at least 2 mega pixels (You can set Search tools in Google)
• Watch for the lighting and angle of the shots – the better they align, the easier it is to create your hybrid
• Combine the images in Photoshop
  – Layer the two images, mask out parts in the top image and resize, rotate to fit
  – Use Adjustment layers to balance light and contrast for the image to ‘work’
• Add your animal to a background (As in National Geographic) :
  – Find a plausible habitat for your animal online
  – Crop out your animal and place in the location
  – Add title and description boxes to the page
• Keep your original files in case you need to start over or fix something!

SUBMIT:

• TWO Photoshop files with all the layers / masks you used

BONUS CHALLENGE:

• Use Clone stamping to merge fur/ skin textures of your animals so they look realistic
• This will need careful blending AND possibly multiple layers / masks to look convincing.

1. Finding / creating images with same type of lighting
2. Masking and resizing with a plan in mind
3. Non-destructive edits using masks