Constructing a modern American masterpiece
Aaron Shon -- CSE 576, Project 1





Step 1: Use Google's image search to find some candidate images of everyone's favorite leader of the free world and of the power behind the throne:



Along with a priceless work of art we'd like to deface:



And some extra eye candy:




Step 2: Use the intelligent scissors tool to cut out masks of said leaders:




Step 3: Insert masked images into priceless artwork:



 This step took quite a bit longer than expected to get things right. First, it's necessary to look through enough images until we find faces for Bush and Cheney that match roughly with the poses and lightning conditions present in the painting. A good deal of additional postprocessing is needed for the image to have a decent appearance.

I began by using a Gaussian filter to smooth out rough edges. Because the image of Cheney was relatively small to begin with, filtering greatly exaggerated the bluriness of the image. The color palettes of each face image were altered to correspond more closely with the skin tone values found in the painting. Another change which seemed to enhance the plausibility of the picture was changing the lighting on the faces using Photoshop's lighting effects tool. For instance, in the original photo of Bush, the light source is coming from the right. I added a light source coming from the left, better matching the apparent source of light in the picture. A similar lighting change was applied to the picture of Cheney's face.



Step 4: Use double masking to add oil well in front of backdrop, but behind background buildings:



 This step just involved taking the mask of the backdrop from the painting (the "sky"), and placing the gushing oil well over it. Then I took the inverse of the backdrop mask (in Photoshop) and applied it to the image with Bush and Cheney's faces on it, allowing me to give the illusion that the oil well was against the sky in the painting, but that it was behind the buildings.

Step 5: Add B-52s. Enjoy.





 I really enjoyed creating the artifact for this project. By far the hardest part of the process was matching the lighting and color effects from the face photos to the original painting. Overall I'm satisfied with the quality of the result, although it's certainly not completely polished.