Final Project: A Photoshop for the Ages

I've been going to the MET ever since I was little.

My family has photos of me at two years old, sitting next to the Temple of Dendur.

My family has photos of me at two years old, sitting next to the Temple of Dendur.

But I've never been "good" at visual arts. Not at painting, not at drawing.

Still, I've always been impressed with people creative enough to make something...crazy. Something "different," whatever that means.

Still, I've always been impressed with people creative enough to make something...crazy. Something "different," whatever that means.

So whenever I get the opportunity to be visually creative, I try to take advantage of it to its full extent.

The story of the Photoshops.

Scratch everything I just told you.

The next part of this story has nothing to do with trying to be creative.

The next part of this story has nothing to do with trying to be creative.

Not at first, at least.

It started as all good things do.

It started as all good things do.

It started as a bet.

It started as a bet.

Well okay, it didn't actually start as a bet. It started as a joke, some petty sort of vindication.

See, I made something of a bad decision.

I had told a friend of mine that I had seen her sister in the school hallway (this was a lie).

My friend, sensing the illegitimacy of this comment, asked me why her sister, who does not know me, would ever come up to me in the first place.

I told her that I was wearing a shirt with her (the friend's) face on it and that her sister was so shocked she came up to me to ask me about it. My friend was clearly wary of my comments, but I tried to keep up the ruse as long as possible.

Hence this masterpiece.

If for some reason you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm. I had failed. Miserably.

She laughed at me then proceeded to make a different (albeit better) version of the shirt with my face on it. It took her five seconds. Mine took me an hour.

She laughed at me then proceeded to make a different (albeit better) version of the shirt with my face on it. It took her five seconds. Mine took me an hour.

I decided I would take my revenge, one way or another.

I decided I would take my revenge, one way or another.

So how could I get redemption after that obviously photoshopped failure? I needed to make sure my friend would never find out that something I photoshopped was not a real image. This way, I figured, we would be 1:1. She ridiculed me for something that I spent too long on and I would ridicule her for not realizing another image I spent too long on was photoshopped.

The plan:

First (and only) step:

I figured the best way to get redemption would be to photoshop a shirt/top onto a DIFFERENT model.

The shirt

The problems

The final product

The result:

The result:

Did she buy it?

Where would my Photoshop adventure lead next? The journey was bound to surpass just a prank (or life or death mission, depending on who you ask) I wanted to play on my friend. Considering that I'd spent several hours of my life already on just two images, both with very selfish purposes (fooling the foolish friend), I figured it was time to take it to the next level.

Actually, this is a much more heroic description of what happened. The real reason I decided to start making more Photoshops was just that I was bored one weekend and couldn't think of anything better to do.

The product of that weekend

and...

Then, I decided to do something a bit more technical. This one was a lot harder than all the other ones you just saw (for very good reason) and took me a lot longer.

Now, remember how I said I like the MET?

Well, when I was thinking about how I wanted to display all of my photoshops, I decided I wanted to have a museum. And what better museum than the MET?

Well, it turns out the MET is a little bit hard to code images into.

So instead...

Each image also has a description attached when you click on it.

It's all on my website, c27if.github.io if you want to look at all of the descriptions. They go into a bit more detail about each individual image than I did in this presentation. I recommend you do that on your laptops, though, because it's more fun to do individually.

No, I didn't photoshop that.