Picture




	Next step was to use Adobe Photoshop in combination with several "masking" tools such as Corel Knock Out and Extensis Mask Pro to extract the parts we were interested in from the background, and then clean the photo up with Photoshop's eraser tool, leaving a transparent background around our musical friend. Sounds easy, but it took a couple of hours per picture!


	The picture, of course, is a composite of several different photos. We set the tuba up on its stand near a blank wall, and wrapped the mouthpiece with plastic film, then filled it with chicken and let nature take its course. As soon as Sai started to lick it, I took the picture.

The we set up a blank picture in Photoshop and dragged the pictures in one by one, playing with the layout to see what worked best. When we were happy with it, we added the greeting text, the little notes (from the Photoshop Musical Symbols font) and a spiffy border, and we were done. I think it only took about three full days (and nights!) to pull it off. Simple, just a lot of work. Of course, I'm not a pro when it comes to Photoshop so I probably took several times as long as I should have. Don't know if I'd do it again, but it was fun and I think it came out pretty nicely. Merry Christmas


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