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Here is the final image:

Here is the before image:

Here’s our completed new year’s card (Happy New Year!):

Prior to the shoot: Know your equipment. It’s my partner’s SLR, she knows more about its nuances than I do, so I just chatted with her about my general vision and what I wanted overall and left the details of the camera’s settings up to her. If you know some Photoshopping will be required, plan ahead for trying to take as many photos as possible using the same camera position and angle, in about the same timeframe of daylight (right now, at our location in MN durring the winter, we’ve got about 20 minutes before the light and shadows change enough to start causing issues if you’re planning on a signifacant cut-and-paste project).

For the shoot: If your family is similar to ours, no one is going to (or can) cooperate, so just start taking pictures, even if you’re not quite set up in that perfect position. If your kid is smiling, snap it! If the animals (in our case, chickens) happen upon a pleasing arrangement, snap it. It’s digital so just fire away at anything and everything that moves. (You’ll notice the card itself ended up being a montage that included a few other gems from the shoot)

Do try to organize the “posed” family shot you had in mind. That means frame the shot first in the camera, then get the dog, the 3year old, yourself and your spouse with enough grain to entice some chickens into the frame. If you’re using a timer, best of luck to you (we had a friend come over and push the button for us rather than deal with the SLR’s timer and running back into the shot, stepping over chickens which would have been disasterous – thanks Steve!).

If you can, try and take a few shots of the “framed” area without anyone in it. This is the real secret to photo retouching – Nothing looks as “natural” as an untouched photo, anything else you do will start to look a little “odd” no matter what, so work on layering complete as possible images together, rather than stamping/cloning over areas (you’ll note I had to do this with the stairs and the kid because of the change of her position). For this same reason, start with a photo that needs the least retouching. I picked a shot that technically, only needed our daughter replaced and April’s face lightend up a bit. I did end up having enough time to put in a better dog shot and an extra chicken on the stairs for balance, but the photo would have been just fine with only our daughter and April’s face fixed in it.

Last, you’ll need to know your image editor as well as you know your camera. Whether you use GIMP or Photoshop you should be able to implement these following tips so long as you know your way around the program’s interface (I ended up using Photoshop as I’m still just a littler faster with it (once it deigns to load up on my system) also, I thought I might need the image to go to the printer in CMYK – GIMP only renders RGB).

1. The pen tool is your friend. Don’t mess with the lasso tool. Learn to use the pen tool to make vector paths that you can then select. If you make a selection mistake you can undo it and just adjust the vectors of the path and then you can reselect — much less hair pulling involved than if you painstakingly lasso’d something and then discovered it’s not quite right (or somehow lost the selection before you were ready).
2. Feathering: learn to use it. When needing to layer items over one another, a feathered edge that matches closest to the rest of the edges in the image will look most natural. This leads me to my other big tip:
3. Mask! Don’t Cut! As mentioned, you should be working with areas as large as possible (That means: don’t try to paste a smile in over someone’s face – replace the whole person’s visible body with a better image of them). As you lay new pieces in, use your pen tool selections to mask out the unwanted background areas instead of cutting them out. You’ll never know when you’ll wish you hadn’t cut out so much of the background, or wish you’d feathered the edges a little less or more – you can go back in and make adjustments to the mask very easily compared to having to re-paste in a whole new image piece and reslect it and adjust that selection from scratch

Once all the pieces of the touch-up are compiled, I like to “merge” all the layers down, “select all” and copy that layer, then undo the merge and paste my new composite layer on top (this way you’ll have all your working layers still saved if you need to go back). Here, on this newly merged layer, is where you’ll do your final little blends and tweeaks to any “artifacts” you created when layering your “fixes” together.

For my final touches, I already knew our card’s images would be in black and white, so I desaturated the image to black and white which forgave a lot of the cut-and-paste artifacts right there. Then, I duplicated the layer again and set the “levels” of my newest layer’s lights and darks to extremes. I then used a gaussian filter to blur that same layer about 3 pixels (this is not that much on a 300dpi image). I then set the blend mode for that layer to “screen” and faded it back to about 20%. This made the whites of the snow “pop” and glow nicely. I ended up applying this technique to all the images in the card’s montage (you can do the reverse of this technique by setting the layer’s blend mode to “multiply” instead of “screen” and then the shadows will deepen dramatically. This looks very nice on summer dusk or rainy day shots).

Last, on my group touch-up, I once again, merged and copied (and un merged – yes, I’m a layer hog) and pasted a final layer up top and again did a very light gausain blur (2 or 3 pixels) and faded to 50%. I then masked that layer and took a very soft brush and rubbed through to the unblurred version underneath to bring out our faces and the details that I wanted to draw attention to. Directing your viewer’s eye around the image using a soft focus or forshortening focus technique like this is another great way to lessen and distract from any artifacts the photo cut and paste process has created.

The final result should be a (fairly) happy family portrait which will make all your friends dispair at your well-behaved pets and kids!

Happy 2011 everyone!

If you’re not one of the above, just check out lynda.com’s software tutorials or cartoonsmart.com’s training videos to pick up a few of those skill sets.

Beyond that, it’s a simple two-fold process. I’ve outlined them below and also included some helpful resource links to give you further insight:

1. Find a prospective client and negotiate the project scope and price with them.
   For an understanding of how this process will go, please check out Scofield Editorial’s illuminating YouTube video on The Vendor Client Relationship.
2. Once negotiations are finalized, design and build away!
   Fellow web developer and SEO guru Mathew Inman has taken the time to chart the process of Design and Development of a Typical Web Project (or: How A Web Design Goes to Hell).

Have fun with your new, free-stylin’ work-from-where-ever-you-want business! Your friends will all be jealous! Many thanks to Scofield Editorial and The Oatmeal for sharing their expertise and insight!