Monday, April 1, 2019

Taking a second look at it, I can see how the subject's right cheek is darker than the left, but the skin tone otherwise seems to be consistent across the rest of the face. Finding a face at the right angle is much harder than I imagined, even when your only search criteria is 'man face straight forward.' I only now realize how seldom I have run across a quality image of a person facing straight ahead (with their head visible). The most challenging part of the blending process was actually when I decided to use the Burn tool as I had in previous projects. Apparently, it can reduce transparency and also bleach, which is not what it had done in the past for me. When I switched around between the Eraser, Burn, and Rubber Stamp tools, I began causing problems for myself in the area of transparency; some of the top layer was semitransparent but read as 100% opaque, so my Rubber Stamp would often remove opacity on areas where I was trying to reduce transparency. I didn't quit until it fit.

MorphX

The final product was smaller than I had anticipated. What is most interesting to me about the picture I found on the Internet was that it not only had my hair color, but it was parted in the same spot, and the subject's head is tilted at the EXACT same angle as mine, AND our shirts match almost perfectly (clearly, they are different sizes)! If only our facial expressions matched. At least the lighting was also similar between the two images.