Creation of Choice

Like usual, I didn't know what to make but I had pictures of cows and got the idea to use Minkel's picture with them. The pictures I used were taken on 1/2/11 at about 8:30 and 10/12/10 at about 6:00 and both were taken with auto.

I opened photoshop and made a new card (Ctrl+N) and found a background on the internet. I'd been planning something totally different to do with marrige and cows but that didn't work so I changed it to the farm. I brought the saturation and curves up on it just because. Then I used quick selection tool (W) to select the cow and copy (Ctrl+C) it to the card and refined the edge setting it to radius 7.0, contrast 14, smooth 23, feather 1.8, expand -11. But there were still some missed spots so using the eraser (E) I touched it up. Then I selected the cow again and changed the hue/saturation to 0, 28, 14, I also added curves. But he was still pretty dark so I used the dodge tool (O) and brightened him up. I also added a drop shadow fx and picked distance 5, spread 0 and size 24. Finally I made a selection around the cow and sharpened him to make him a little less blurry.

I made a selection around Minkel's picture next and copied it to the card but it was too big so I used Free Transform (Ctrl+T) to shrink it down. I changed her hue/saturation to 2, 6, 3. Then I needed to make her look like a farmer so I found a straw hat on google and brought it onto a new layer, making sure the layer was behind Minkel. I had to use free transform to flip it though and disort transform to change the size. After that was done I decided to add curves and changed that around a little bit and went back to google. I found a cartoon of a pitchfork and used free transform to shrink it and rotate transform to angle it. I didn't know what to replace the color of so I tried it on the pitchfork handle, changing it from blue to brown. I added a drop shadow to Minkel, the hat and the pitchfork but it looked wierd so I undid it and merged Minkel and the hat. Then I simply copied the drop shadow from the cow and added it to Minkel and the pitchfork.

I moved the farm down a little to make room for the text and used the smudge tool to spread the light blue sky out a little. Then I made the text: blue, Trajan Pro, Bold, 24 pt, Strong and set the Arch to 22, 0, 0. I duplicated the layer and changed the blending mode to darker color. Then, I found a picture of Minnesota on google and turned it into a stamp by edit, define brush preset, alt+ctrl+G. I then put it onto the card under the text I'd made. Then I added a filter to the background which was reduce noise: strength 7, preserve details 68, reduce color noise 0, sharpen details 0. Finally I made a new layer select, all, select, modify: 10 px, edit, fill and made that the boarder.

I really like the way this turned out even though I still kind of wanted to go with the cow wedding idea. The only thing I'm worried about is that it seems kind of busy in the background with the farm and all.