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In our first session using the Adobe Creative Suite we were tasked with changing the picture on the left and making it look something resembling the one on the right.
Firstly we had to clean up the background on the base layer - the one with the bulb. I did this by creating a new layer above the bulb layer, then using a feather edged white brush I 'painted over the areas to the right hand side and to the bottom of the bulb to hide all the undesired parts of the background. I then placed the screw piece layer into position on top of the original image, adjusting the size and position so that it fitted seamlessly, before using the patch tool to remove all the filament from the bulb, as well as the rest of the layer surrounding the base of the bulb. The clone stamp tool was used to remove the stamp at the top of the bulb and replace it with ordinary glass from the area around the top of the bulb, the same tool was also used to remove the filament from the top of the screw layer - to make it appear as if there was never a filament within the bulb..
The trunk of the tree was then placed over where the filament would have been, before the magic wand was used to select the areas around the tree. These areas where then put under a layer mask to be hidden from view (white shows, black hides). The head of the tree was then put into position before the branches on this layer removed - to make the bits with the leaves fit with the other tree layer.
We then proceeded to add the reflections of the tree to the inside of the bulb. This was achieved by duplicating the layer with the leaves in, adjusting the size before warping to match the curvature of the bulb and reducing the opacity down to around 30 or 40 %. A small section towards the bottom of the reflection was masked off to avoid clashing with the 'real' tree or appearing outside of the bulb.
The lower reflection was made using a similar process but was first rotated through 180 degrees to give a realistic reflection.
I then played around with the brightness and contrast settings with the bulb to make the glass and metal bright and shiny. I also played with the hue settings of the tree layers to give the tree an orange-y tint to it.
If I were to reproduce this pece I would take more care with the background, as there is a clear difference between the right hand side which is very white and the middle and left hand sides towards the top of the image where still have a light grey gradient at the top. Also at the bottom you can see the effects of using the stamping tools.
And on closer inspection you can see where I have used the clone stamp tool on the screw element.
