lol

 

CT... you da man...

 

I'm a w*nker!

Hey wantone, you could combine all those chicks of yours into your ideal woman. Now THAT would be somethin!

 

To each his own. I prefer layering and masking to cloning in this case because you don't have to keep a perfect reference point, and you can undo any mistakes at any point.

Let's do a simple two-frame example. Layer one frame over the other. Assuming you were shooting on a tripod, the background will be exactly the same, so the edges are in effect your reference. Mask the top layer as "Hide all." Then, start painting the mask where you want the skier to show up. If you overshoot the edge of the skier, no biggie, reverse your paint color and pant the mask back in. In fact, zoom in, change brush sizes, and go at it in detail. Or, use a magnetic lasso to automatically snap to the edges of the skier. Or... as you can see, there's plenty of ways to approach the same problem. While cloning is powerful, and layer masking may seem complicated at first, it really provides more control.

 

Yes, that'll work too. There's usually so many different ways to achieve the same thing... all roads lead to Rome. Now if we could just get some of these guys having a go, it would be a real fun thread!

As soon as you start talking about masks and layers I find people get put off quickly not realizing how easy it is once you've grasped the idea. I know there's a lot of interest in this stuff on the forum and I thought just playing with the clone tool would give folks a quick grasp of the possibilities. Once they're sufficiently interested, the rest comes with practise.