Software used: Adobe Photoshop 5.0
After downloading the two .bmp’s, I dropped the photo of Palmer into a new Photoshop file. I scaled him using the transform/scale tool.
Using the path tool, I masked out the background of Palmer, and deleted it.
On a new layer, I dragged Anne’s photo
into the file. I did a transform to make the photo about the same size as Palmer’s.I masked
out and deleted the background using the path tool.
I color corrected the two files using the Color Balance
window. The colors of the
two photos are slightly different, perhaps the
photos were shot using different brands of film, or were
scanned in at different settings. I added a little yellow to Palmer.
I imported a background of a park, and blurred it with the Gaussian Blur filter. Then, using the move tool,
I overlapped the two original masked photos.
Using the magic wand, I selected the background and did a select inverse of each photo.
Using the Select/Modify/Expand, I cut a pixel perimeter around each photo,
for purposes of cleanup.
Using Select/Modify/Border/2 pixels,
I put a Gaussian blur on each person, to mesh them better together with each
other and the background.
I flattened the layers, and changed the setting from 24 bit color to 8 bit (256 colors),
I tried web palette, but it left the images too grainy.
An alternative to my approach
would be to go to the saturate colors palette, (command-U),
hit colorize and mess with
the controls, which gives you a bogus duotone effect.
This would be cheap on memory,
but I wanted this in color, thus the 8-bit solution.
I saved the file as a .gif, coming out at a 90% savings on memory,
from 970k to about 97 k.
That’s it!