The assignment was “Take a picture of your subject (grandparents, pet, yourself) and put it into a totally different background in which they appear abnormally too small or too large. Think of Honey, we shrunk the kids…”

I took my friend who was dressed up for Oktoberfest and I placed him in a classroom.  I was originally going to put him in a preschool, but I thought that might be creepy.

Here’s the tutorial explanation:

1.  You are going to start by saving the picture you want to use… and then upload it into photoshop.

2. You need to select the person so that you can make them smaller or larger.  I use Quick Mask Mode, and the paintbrush tool.  After you have colored in the person, leave Quick Mask Mode, and you should have “ants” around the person.

3.  Open a new canvas, and put the background picture on this canvas.

4.  Go back to the first canvas, with your person.  Copy and paste it onto the background canvas.  Resize it to the size that you would like.  You can click on the layer and then click Command T (if you are using a Mac) to change the size, and hold the Shift key down while you are resizing it to keep its proportions.

5.  You are going to need to change the picture a little bit.  When you’re on the layer of the person, go to Image> Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights.  Alter it so that it matches up with the background as much as possible.

6.  You can then use the blur tool to make sure the edges of the person and background are not too sharp or awkward.  You can also use the burn tool to add a shadow where it should be in the picture.

That’s it!

PS – The background image (classroom) was found here.