King: Well, yes, relevance is there ;)

Um, I was shortly to go to bed, it was about 11:30pm. I hate mornings but I decided to go through the whole rigmarole of setting up a tripod and undertaking various poses with the aid of a remote control.

The fault I would put to this image would be that none of the three is directly looking at the others but I was too tired to care by the time I finished faffing around with it. I also desaturated slightly just to give it an overall, slightly chocolaty finish to compliment the t-shirt and sofa.

Yes, the arm was a pain and I soon lost interest leaving it at that. I'm lazy. Wacom tablet? Elaborate, if you will.

Montage: I think the theme is a gimmick/cliche so this is an apt entry

@mooch...Wacom is probably the best of the pressure-sensitive tablets designed for graphic arts. Mine is very small, about the size of a mouse pad, so I can travel with it and use it with my laptop on an airplane. Here's a page from the Wacom website:

http://www.wacom-europe.com/int/products/intuos/tablets.asp?lang=en&pdx=32

The tablet maps to whatever is displayed on your monitor, pixel to pixel. The tablet senses the position of the pen even before the pen makes contact with the tablet, so you can determine exactly where your work will take place.

The tablet is pressure sensitive, so very light brushstrokes and delicate work can be done. For instance, say you have a brush that is 50 pixels in diameter. You can start a stroke at one pixel-width and expand it up to 50 pixels at the end of the stroke, or vice versa. With the mouse, every time you click, you get 50 pixels worth of effect. Once you are used to the pen, you can just stay with one diameter for a bit and use the pressure sensitivity to make smaller corrections.

To me, using the pan is much more fluid and natural than working with the mouse.

You can get a good, used one for about 85 British Pounds on E-Bay.

Ok great stuff, you're almost endearing yourself to me. I will check it out at some stage. I don't really shoot this sort of image often but it is painstaking work if you really want to achieve 'the' finish between overlays.

@mooch...you said, "I also desaturated slightly just to give it an overall, slightly chocolaty finish to compliment the t-shirt and sofa."

I forgot to tell you that I think that was a good and very effective decision.

Are you trying to kill me with kindness King?

@mooch...I'm old. I don't have time to hold grudges. Besides, I think of you as kin.

I like an argument, that's why I like to wade in. If the majority is against me, well, then it's just more of a challenge. You're a bigger man than I.

Getting rated is taking forever. This image has been up nearly 24 hours. A reflection of the popularity of this theme I feel...

My most recent was posted before yours (this one), and it still doesn't have the minimum number.

Never had it this quiet before.

"This town, is becoming like a ghost town!"

@mooch...3.368. The critics are hard to please.

Yes indeed
you
would
expect them
to be grateful

with
so few
images
having been
submitted

mooch,

just interested: where are the layer borders? You just concealed them damn well :)))

bioLarzen, he put the camera on a tripod! so if he kept his lighting and didn't move anything he didn't have to do a whole lot of editing! a eraser with hardness set to zero will do!
the only part wich are difficult is where he overlaps with himself (arm and fist) you can see editing done on the edge of his fist!

oh now that i'm looking at it so carefully i see some mor flaws...
to the left of your middle mans right arm, there is a shadow cut off! same person right leg, to the left not very smooth blending!

I don't want to nitpick, but I do this to be constructive! Since this picture has a lot of weight on the technical realisation!

So next time give yourself a little more time!

btw, you can still do good without a wacom board, you just need a whole lot more time!

@ChriZ...yes, but the Wacom tablet and pen is not only sweet, but essential, in my opinion, for advanced selection and retouching techniques.

@King, I have one sitting right infront of me! What I wanted to say, when it comes down to editing, you could theoretically zoom in and just do editing pixel by pixel! So you wouldn't need a mouse for that!
The big advantage is you can be percise with it and work fast!
With a mouse you can work percise too but need a lot more time!

When doing artistic stuff (paintings) you don't have any other choices then to go with a wacom!

ChriZ: I have a low patience threshold, so yeah, a little more time is required.

I reiterate, I did this, late Sunday evening tired from sleeping on a mates floor the night before. I began shooting at about 11:10pm and finished this image around 12:20am. If I had the time or inclination I would shoot this all over again as the point is that two of those is meant to seemingly have direct eye contact with another of the subject.

Like I said on my other entry (the red t-shirt fighting guys), this is easy, three separate images overlaid and then edited. I am surprised that this particular shot seems so grain free as believe it or not, it was shot at ISO1600 due to poor light conditions. A number of the other shots were blurred due to motion. I suggest everyone has a go, it's easy and you have endless connotations...

ISO 1600 and this quality? Holy WOW! Pixelninja???

Isn't a good plugin just as good - and way cheaper - than this Wacom gizmo?

bioLarzen: No, just straight out of the camera, no noise reduction.

Wacom gizmo... aha!...
what kind of plugin? one that turns your mouse into a pen? =)
I think that plug in actually would cost more...