Week 10 - Cloning

The banner for week 10 was a cloning job. Here's how I did it:

First I selected a strip out of the original photo that was banner size:
700x125 pixels, I used the select marquee and chose an area approx. 700
by 125 pixels in dimensions, then "Image > Crop".

Next, I cloned out the stairs by selecting the snow near it as my source and thus removing them when I cloned over them.

with stairs

without stairs

I cloned out the house, using the woods as the source. I had to use many different sources in the woods to make it look natural and not repeated textures. Even so there is a mirror tree texture spot near the top of the car and over the hood which I'm noticing and would fix if I wasn't using this as an example.

Finally, I wanted to add text. I chose the "T" tool in Photoshop, chose the font, clicked on the banner and typed in my words. 

Finally I added an Layer Style Effect to the Text:

I went to Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow, played with the sliders until I got the shadow I wanted and voila, the finished banner:

FYI - this was the last winter I spent in VT, December 2008, we'd sold our house

and were renting a neighbor's second home up the road. It was not really equipped
for serious winter living, so when "The Ice Storm" hit knocking down trees,
powerlines, etc., I was trapped there for 3 days (my hubby had already left for
FL in his truck pulling a trailer with all our worldly goods in it). Their generator
required me going out to the barn every 4 hours and pouring a qt. of gas in the
tiny reservoir, day and night, and since the house had electric heat I had to
keep it going. After the road crew cleared the trees from the road I bailed from
that extremely rural situation and stayed at a friend's house in the town of
Wilmington, VT (near Mt. Snow). I only had about 10 days left to teach before
heading for FL. A week after arriving at my friend's we got a humongous 2
day snow storm on top of the previous ice storm damage. This is my car in her
driveway, which had been plowed the day before of course. I look at this to remind
myself why I now live in FL, especially in the summer when it is 98 degrees and
99% humidity. Fine, I'll take that if I don't ever have to deal with snow, ice,
and knee deep mud again '-).