CHAPTER 11 HOW THE DIGITAL DARKROOM MAKES GOOD PHOTOS INTO GREAT FANTASIES^171
When I get a college brochure, the first thing I
look for is racial diversity. If I don’t see a few
minority faces in the pictures, I toss it aside,
because who wants to go to some podunk college
that can’t even afford Photoshop?
Bill MusePHOTOGRAPHYtends to be thought of as a realistic art. But it doesn’t have to be that way, you know.
Photographers are kids, too, and they get delight out of playing with photos or rendering a small touch of magic.
With Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and dozens of other software programs, you can abandon your search for truth
and create a really cool fantasy.
The solution for sure-fire, unambiguous ridicule is to start with a photograph just to make sure everyone knows exactly
who you’re making fun of. There are plenty of software programs out there already configured to let you convert a
photo of a boss, loved one, political figure or the goat of the moment into a professionally rendered, photorealistic
source of general mirth. They’re called morphing programs. Here we show you what you can do with these home-
sized versions of the same special-effects technology that lets the villain of Terminator 2change form so easily.
Then there’s Rob Silvers, who invented the photomosaic process while at the MIT media lab. Since then, his photos,
made out of legions of smaller photos, have been on the covers of Newsweek,Sports Illustrated, and Playboy, and
his hands have been in the pockets of Fortune 500 companies clamoring to have their own photomosaics. You can
hire him, too, or you can use some of the cheap or free software to build your own. And doing it digitally is a lot
easier and neater than pulling out glue, scissors, and the family’s photo collection. You’ll get started the digital way in
this chapter.
Of course, size matters. Have you ever been to IMAX? The bigger a picture, the more impressive and intriguing it
gets. Before digital photography, the most common way to create a panoramic photo—the kind that stretches on and
on horizontally, perfect for bridges, chorus lines, and mountain ranges—was to use back-breaking cameras costing
thousands of dollars. Their lenses revolved to expose a long strip of film. Now Kodak has a camera that takes
panoramas you can carry in a shirt pocket. Not that you need a special camera at all—provided that what you do
use is digital. You’ll find in this chapter how to do it digitally.