Last week I took some photos for The Elves And The Shoemaker kids show currently playing at Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary. When I finally got around to editing the photos, it became clear that I was once again facing a typical “multi-subject” photography problem – that is, you have a photo where everybody’s perfect… except for that one person. That one individual is either looking away or has a goofy expression on or has their eyes closed or whatever. *sigh* I hate it when that happens!

This time, however, instead of just deleting these photos, I thought I’d try my hand at “photoshopping” them… except that I don’t actually have Photoshop per se. I’ve been using “Microsoft Picture It!” for years, as it was free (thanks to a kind donation by our friend Jason) and up until now, it has done everything I’ve needed it to do. Lately though, I’ve been wanting to try my hand at stuff like adding textures to photos (i.e. multiple layering of digital images), and I can’t seem to find any tutorials on how to do this sort of thing with the program I am currently using. My friend Keith also showed me how he could easily adjust for my camera’s barrel effect using Lightroom, and I am even more convinced I need to upgrade soon if I want to further my photographic studies. But I digress. Elves. Editing. Faces. Go.

So, for example, here is one of the photos I took for the show. In this case I love the expressions on Mr. and Mrs. Shoemaker, but I clearly caught the elves at a, um, less than flattering moment.

And here is the second (and last I took of this scene) photo, where the elves are fine, but not so much the Shoemakers (nothing personal, Djoeke).

Now, looking at these little square versions (I cropped the originals to get better detail  here for the blog), it occurs to me that I could have just cut the image in half almost-horizontally and just combined the two. Ah, hindsight… Instead, I painstakingly deleted the elf faces from the first image, then copied them from the second, pasting them back into the first photo. I then blended all the surrounding details to make it all fit properly. It was a bit of work, but totally worth it.

Here is the work in progress.

And here is the finished product.

Not too shabby, but I’m sure I could do it with a little more finesse if I spent the time learning my current program a bit better. Or if I saved my pennies and upgraded. Anyhow. Just thought I’d share a little behind the scenes magic with y’all on this cold and snowy Friday. Hope you have a great weekend. And if you’re in the Calgary area, please come on down and check out the show!

Oh! And if you’re on Facebook and would like to see the rest of the photos, head over to the fanpage and check it out!