Saturday, July 24, 2010

Silhouettes...

Back during the Regency, making silhouettes was rather popular... so, I thought I'd try my hand at doing one on the computer. This one is of me and Victoria and is based of a photo which I used The GIMP to cut out and trace, and iPhoto to slightly blur the edges. Maybe next time I will do more of the picture, and not just a cut-out. I was going for the little vase effect between the faces, but as it turns out I'm not sure the faces line up quite well enough.

As for the origin of Silhouettes, wikipedia says the following:

The term silhouette derives from the name of Etienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who, in 1759, was forced by France's credit crisis during the Seven Years War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy.Because de Silhouette was said to enjoy making cut paper portraits, his name became eponymous with these portraits and with anything done or made cheaply. Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silhouette

4 comments:

  1. I've always loved silhouettes, I might try making one of my husband and I with your tips, thanks Justin :-)

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  2. Here's the detailed explanation I gave Victoria:

    I used white to cover up the part of the picture between us... (I cropped it between various stages when I felt like it until I finally got it to the right size)

    1. Set the background and foreground to be white in the color options
    2. Used selection boxes to cover larger areas (I used the cut function to remove the image and leave the background color)
    3. Used large eraser to white out areas close to us that couldn't be deleted by using large squares/elliptical selections (also used shift-select to do long straight erasing)
    4. Used small eraser (with fuzzy edges) to cut out the holes in your hair.
    5. Did a color selection on white, copy to clipboard
    6. Created a new image on a black background
    7. Pasted in the white selection
    8. Cropped it again
    9. Saved as PNG
    10. Imported into iPhoto
    11. Used iPhoto and maxed out the fuzzy and increased definition options
    12. sent via email/uploaded to fb

    If I were to do it again, I would up the resolution using interpolation before cutting us out, that way the image would be smoother when I was done. I forgot to do that at the beginning.

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  3. I love you, & thank you for making the silhouette!! <3

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