Best way to achieve this graphic effect?

[gretsky]

Hi all.
Just wanted to get some of your thoughts on this. I have seen really well done graphics with "people" on the web.........my favorite being www.joshgroban.com. The way a cityscape or countryside blends in the photo. I would really like to achieve this type of effect, however, am I wrong is guessing that most of the time sites like these start out with professional shots anyway, and then some photoshopping? I wouldn't really guess that he was cut out and placed in that background. Anyone got any ideas on how to go about achieving such a well done graphic, considering most people like myself do not have the kind of money he has to spend on "professional" photo-shoots? Or, any books that concentrate on this subject?

Thanks to everyone for their input.

gretsky

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

it was actually done in flash, though a clever animation could probably do it, and yes you are right, it was probably a professional photo to start out with, I think if you had the clouds under the "city" layer you could get the effect you are looking for though I dont know how large of an image filesize that would be

[entimp]

That is done with FLASH.
It is a second layer that has a high opacity. This has a repeated movement across the background and under the foreground. The landscape probably has a mask effect over it too.

[gretsky]

Thank you for your replies. However, I think I have confused and misled you. I knew the front page was done in flash.........however, I mean just the picture aspect of it. To be more concise, for example, the photos section of www.joshgroban.com (not the actual photo pics, but the background of this section)

Does this clarify things any better?

gretsky

[Juparis]

If you're talking about the clouds, that's just more Flash..

If you mean the picture of Mr. Groban on the dirt road (in the photo section), I'd say it's simply a picture of him on a real dirt road, taken as such. The only graphical editing I can see is a slight feathering/white gradient used to outline and emphasize his presence. I believe this is what you're after, and it's really quite easy. The only problem is having a program powerful enough to master the detail to the point where it looks natural...

The front page with Mr. Groban in front of the city looks like it could have been cut/paste, and then feathered to blend it in. Most likely, the picture was enhanced and blowed up before being edited. After full detailed editing, it was shrunk back down, scaled to size, and placed over the city picture. By doing so, it looks almost natural since graphical editing errors are too small to see when shrunk down..

I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well enough, but I've got a few programs that could help. I've been very happy with an Adobe Photoshop product, but I don't recall the exact edition. I'd assume that they're all good, though. Other programs are dependent on what you're trying to achieve. For example, when I had the Adobe Photoshop (whatever edition it was), there was a tool to outline certain figures. You traced the basic shape, but to make it more precise, the tool configuration (I'm no programming guru, so bear with my lack-of-sufficient wording) would look for a certain seperation between the colors of a general area, and then draw the line between those colors, assuming the figure you wanted to outline was inside the drawn shape. Does this kind of make sense? I've had a program by Photo Pos Pro (an old version) that helped me exclusively with gradients. I'd have to work harder on outlining a subject (before deleting the background or foreground), but to get the customed fading effect, everything was a snap. I hope I'm explaining myself well enough to others since I haven't used many programs that work with what gretsky is looking for. Good luck!

[GatorSr]

Editing a photo and putting someone just about anywhere is fairly easy on a pc.

I do a lot of photo edits for printed material and online. I saved the sample below as gifs, but the original application was jpg for a web site.

The subject's head is the same in both photos. I took his pic in the t-shirt then put him in a suit and tie with a studio background so he didnt have to go home and change..

Good software and lots of practice.

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/554/suitandtie2bd.gif