Photoshop Lessons – How To Photoshop Your Gremlin Kids Into A Star Wars Poster

Well, I don’t know what the deal is with you dimwits, but I have a hundred nieces and nephews.  At least it feels that way. It might as well be a hundred when they’re all gathered for the holidays, running around the house biting and screaming like a bunch of rabid animals.  The worst is, now some of them are into Star Wars.  They’ll go around for hours with their toy lightsabers, hacking away at my shins, and stabbing me in the neck.

I swear they’re lucky they’re cute kids, or else I’d take those lightsabers and snap them right in half.  Whoops, sorry about that, young Skywalker.  I’m hungover and trying to take a nap.  Now go bug your parents, and give your uncle a break with the dangblasted lightsabers already.  Cripes almighty.  I hate Star Wars with a passion.

Today’s Photoshop lesson, I will teach you how to Photoshop your gremlin kids into a Star Wars poster so that they’ll leave you the crap alone.  With any luck, maybe they’ll go off to a galaxy far, far away to admire their Star Wars poster instead of whipping around those friggin’ lightsabers like they’re Obi Wan Kenobi or something.  One could only hope.

Let’s begin today’s Photoshop lesson, shall we?  We shall, Jedi Photoshoppers.

Step 1:  Take Some Aspirin

Welp, I’ve been sober for about 2 weeks now.  It’s not as awesome as it sounds, trust me, but I don’t have any more money to go blow on whiskey binges every other night, so I’ll be doing this one completely uninebriated, unfortunately.  I’m just gonna have to dig deep to find another source of motivation.

Forget the music and booze.  I’m going in a different direction.  I’m gonna down half a bottle of expired Aspirin that I found in my shaving bag back from high school.  If you don’t have an expired bottle of Aspirin, feel free to substitute the Aspirin with some whiskey, wine, vodka, moonshine, uppers, crank, speed, meth, or all of thee above depending on how many kids of your own that you have.

Honest to God, I wish I had the Force right about now, cause I’d use it to snatch up my neighbor’s beer bottle in a flash.  I can see them outside grilling shish kabobs and drinking Coronas.  Must be nice living high on the hog.  I’m popping a few more Aspirins and going straight to bed right after this galactic fiasco is finished up.

Step 2:  Selecting A Swinging Sponge Mop Photo

Above is the original, untouched photo that I’ll be working with for this demonstration.  As you can see, it’s me getting in some quality bonding time with one of my nephews.  If you don’t have a photo of yourself swinging around a sponge mop to the back of your nephew’s pink flowered stroller, just use this one, or Google another image using those key search words.

By now, you should be some regular, old cowboys and cowgirls with the Lasso Tool, so I’m gonna skip that step.  Actually I’m gonna skip about 50 other steps while I’m at it, because I’m starting to get carpal tunnel from typing up all these Photoshop tutorials.  Mainly I just want to teach you a little about layers for this lesson.  One must learn to crawl before they can go around whacking people in the knee caps with godforsaken lightsabers.

And I just realized, I probably shoulda taught you how to use layers in the first lesson since it’s the most important step to becoming a Photoshop Jedi master like myself, but that’s one of the downsides to teaching these lessons drunk.

Forget it.  The past is the past, so there’s no sense dwelling on what could’ve been.   Here’s the lassoed, isolated layer of myself that I’ll be working with.

Step 3:  Replacing The Sponge Mop With A Lightsaber

In the previous lesson, you learned how to make a Mary Poppins flying umbrella witch poster, and you became familiar with the Clone Stamp Tool.  It’s a pretty handy dandy tool.  In the photo below, take notice that I used the Clone Stamp Tool to sample and cover up the sponge mop on my sweatshirt.  I also used the Clone Stamp Tool to get rid of the harsh shadows caused by the mop head.

What’s that?  I sense some doubt.  I find your lack of faith to be disturbing.  Here’s a side by side comparison so you get an idea of just how lethal of a weapon the Clone Stamp Tool can really be.

Now that I got rid of the sponge mop and harsh shadows, I’ll teach you how to add in the lightsaber.  Let out a hearty yee-haw cowboys and cowgirls and wake up the neighbors.  Select the Lasso Tool from the upper, left hand corner, take a few more Aspirins, and give those hands a lassoing they’ll never forget.  Once you’ve made the selection, make a new layer of just the hands.  In between the layer of me swinging around a sponge mop and the hands layer, I will be adding a layer of the lightsaber.  It’s a little confusing.  Here’s another visual so you know what the hell I’m talking about.

You can see that I’ve named the layers in the order they should go in.  In between the layer of me swinging around the sponge mop and the hands layer is the layer of the lightsaber.  Assuming you know how to count to ten, you should also notice a fifth layer at the top titled “Handle.”

I made a separate layer of the portion of the handle located in the gap between my hands, and placed it as the top layer so it looks like my hands are clasping the lightsaber.  I don’t know if I’m making any sense.  Probably not, but I’m moving on anyways, cause I’m starting to feel a little lightheaded and my extremities are going numb.

Step 4:  Talking Squirrels; Time To Wrap It Up

No time for chit chat.  There’s a squirrel outside my bedroom window that keeps looking at me, and I swear he just said, “Hello there, Photoshop Knight.  Whad’ya say it’s time you wrapped this sonofabitch up.”   So I’m not gonna argue with him.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a close up of squirrel’s ugly rat teeth after downing twelve Aspirins, but they’re pretty freaking sharp.

Man, oh day.  I gotta go lay down for a minute or two, cause it feels like my liver’s been turned inside out and I’m starting to black out.  I really need to get a job so I can stop doing these Photoshop tutorials.  No joke, I just heard today that Speilberg is considering doing a film here in Pittsburgh.  As long as it’s not George Lucas making another 4 hour film about Jar Jar Binks, that’s cool with me.

Here’s your Star Wars poster with the shin bashing, lightsaber culprits.  I replaced the original background with a space background.  I added a photo of my bratty nephews squirting me with water guns at the family picnic, as well as a photo of my niece holding a pink light saber, and a photo of the stroller bound nephew trapped in some spaceship thing at the Chuck E. Cheeses.  For good measure, I also added a photo of a hungry bear that I took at the zoo last summer, cause I didn’t feel like staring at Chewbacca’s hairy fanged, sasquatch face all day.

It says the Aspirin expired in 1998.  I feel like I’ve been put on the Death Star and blown up to smithereens.  I used to really like Star Wars, and now it’s all ruined for me.  Well, here’s your poster before I go pass out cold.

Congratulations on making a Star Wars poster of your gremlin kids.  That concludes today’s Photoshop tutorial.  Join me next lesson as I teach you how to Photoshop your nieces and nephews on top the roof while I go use the Force to snatch up a 12-pack of Coronas from the neighbors, and eat all their shish kabobs in peace and quiet.