During our most recent Disney Vacation in March I was totally inspired by the new video from One Republic’s “Good Life.” We listen to the song often and we close our eyes and envision ourselves riding on Big Thunder Mountain, skipping through the park with Mickey or playing the drums with Donald. My inspiration was all the live footage inside a “photo frame” with live footage. I thought this would be a terrific idea to do with our photos in each of the 4 parks. This is what I finally came up with…
I posted these on my facebook page as we were vacationing and had a lot of people asking me “How did you do that?” Well, it’s not as tricky as you think. So let’s get started with doing your own little magic…
First have your family members stand on each side of the landmark and have them “pretend” they are holding a frame. I’m going to show you how we did our Hollywood Studios family magic. What is important here is that you want four fingers in the back and your thumb in the front like below:
Take this photo a few times both horizontal and vertical so later you can decide which photo is going to work best. Then take a photo of all of you in the same spot as a group.
Now comes the fun part of creating your family magic photo.
Step 1. Decide which “Pretend” and “Family” photo you like best and open them both in your preferred digital creative software. I use Photoshop Elements 9 so the screen shots you see below are from this software program.
Step 2. You will need to create a “NEW” page with a transparent background. I always create a new 12X12 page but for this purpose a photo size would be perfect. Let’s call this our “canvas” to make it easier to understand.
Step 3. I then re-colored the canvas to a bright green but you can recolor as you desire to makes it easier for you to see and work with.
Step 4…. result
Step 5. Take the canvas and drag and drop it onto my “Pretend” photo and resize the width to fit in the fingers of my subjects. In this case my son, John Wesley and my daughter, Adrianna.
Step 6. I like to also reduce the opacity to about 60% so I can see how it fits over their thumbs but not too much into their hand.
Step 7. Now you need to resize the green background to fit into their hands like below…
At this point it’s time to save your work as a .psd file so you don’t overwrite your original photo but yet can still continue to work on your project. I will call mine Good Life AK Magic.
Step 8. After saving you now need to grab the “Family” photo and drag and drop it over your canvas.
Step 9. You need to hit Ctrl-G which will group your photo in the shape of the canvas. If it doesn’t work then you need to go back to your Good Life AK Magic and ensure you have selected the canvas before dropping your “family” photo.
Step 10. I then resize the photo to fit inside the shape as I desire. Now it might not be tall enough or too tall so select your canvas and play with the height but be careful to monitor your width as you don’t want it to move from the fingers of your subject.
Step 11. You now need to hide the family photo by clicking on the eye which then disappears just like your photo.
Step 12. Now you need to click on your Canvas and reduce the opacity to 60%.
Step 13. Now it’s time to use your eraser and start erasing over the finger. I selected 8 px with the solid brush.
Step 14. As you can see below I erased the green that was over each finger. It’s important to take your time and do a little bit at a time and stop that way it’s easy to undo if you accidently erase to much you don’t have to start over with the whole finger just the last item you erased.
Step 15. Now you can increase the Opacity on the Canvas back to 100% to review your work.
Step 16. Click on the “eye” next to the Family Photo to reveal your family photo.
Step 17. Now you you’ll notice that it looks like they are holding a free floating family photo.
If you want you can stop here but if you wish you can add a frame as I did. I selected this great frame from Natalie’s Place Designs – Not So Spooky kit. It has great layering and I love the look it created for me.
Step 18. You now need to drag and drop your frame onto your project.
Step 19. Resize it to fit over the photo/canvas. I like to reduce the occupancy at this point as well because again we want it over the finger properly but not too much to give the right illusion.
Step 20. You might have some of the photo exposed either above or below the frame so you will need to get rid of it.
Step 21. Make sure you select the canvas before you start to erase. As you see below as you erase the bottom disappears. Be careful not to go above the inside of the frame.
Step 22. When finished you can see that the bottom is gone below the frame.
Step 23. Now you need to select the frame and erase over the finger.
Step 24. I selected 13px and what I call the fuzzy brush to erase the frame to expose the fingers.
Step 25. Repeat for the other finger. I adjusted it to 8px for her finger.
Step 26. Now increase you opacity on your frame back to 100%. Now it looks like they are hold a framed photo.
When complete simply save as .jpg and you’ve now created your very own “Good Life” Magic Shot! Hopefully I didn’t lose anybody through the process. Sometimes I never know if I provide too much information or not enough so I try to do too much just to be safe. Here is my cover for using my “Good Life” Magic Shots.
I can’t wait to see all those wonderful “Good Life” magic shots! Let the Memories Begin! Wishing you all a magical day!