crucifix - picture transformation

all of this . . .

came from this . . .

last summer, my son (scott) went to a wedding in kansas city with a friend. he saw this crucifix there and thought it was just an eye-catching beautiful piece of art -- so he took a picture to show me how neat it looked.

i did have to agree w/ him -- it does have a fascinating, eerie appeal to it. something that just makes you stop and take a look at it to see what it truly is. the problem w/ the picture for me, though, was that it had some distracting elements in it -- the dark color of the roof, the head in the front left, and something else in the front right, taken at an angle from a distance, and it was too dark.

i asked him if he cared if i tried making some changes to it and cleaning up some of that outside, distracting stuff. he thought that would be fine, so i gave it a try.

i added some light to the picture before i cropped in closer on the crucifix, leaving out the line of the room and part of the outer distractions. next, i tilted the picture just a little so that the crucifix was vertically straight. after tilting, i had to re-crop the picture to have straight lines on the edges.

i enlarged the picture on the computer screen to where i could easily see the individual pixels. i used the eye dropper tool to pick up colors of the picture to "paint" out the distraction on the lower right and keep the marbled look of the wall continuous.

because he took the picture from the right side, there is more light or showing on the right. i wanted a totally symmetrical look, with the same amount of light on each side as if he were looking at the crucifix from straight on when he took the picture.

i used the freehand "select" tool and traced around the wall space on the right, copied it to another image, chose the "mirror" button to reverse it, and finally copied/pasted it back onto the original on the left side of the crucifix -- so the light looks the same on the left as on the right.

i wanted to make sure there were no obvious lines from the copy/paste step, so i used a large, soft brush to blend the areas where the lines could possible be showing.

i decided to add just a touch more light to the picture to bring out the reflective qualities in the wall colors.

almost done, i recropped the picture to make sure that the crucific was the absolute center of the picture. then, to put more emphasis on the cross and the center of the picture, i chose to add a glow from the center, which automatically darkened the upper corners and emphasized the oblong circle around the cross.

when i was done, i was VERY happy with the outcome. the picture resolution of this photo is high enough that is can easily print out at 20 x 30 poster size or print on canvas. i think it would make a beautiful picture to hang for display or a nice post card or greeting card. scott and i have talked about listing it for sale, but haven't decided where to post it.

this picture is registered as part of the original artwork of my son's collection. i'm posting it on MY blog b/c of my work on "fixing" the picture that he took, but i'm giving him full credit for the picture.