Introduction

Recap the last two lessons by asking the class:

• What have we covered in the last two lessons?
• What tools have we been using?
• What new skills have you learned?
• What does the lasso tool do?
• Why is working with layers useful when photo editing?

 

Alien landscapes

We are moving on from pop art this week. Ask the students to take a look at this alien landscape. What features can you see in this strange place? 

 

 

Now take a look at this collection of seven images, do you notice anything about them?

 

 

The alien landscape image was created by editing together parts of these seven pictures. The mountain ranges came from the first two, the flooring and sky from others, and then the moons,  planets and lightning were added too. 

This week the students’ task is to edit together parts from lots of different pictures to create their own alien landscape. 

For this you are going to need a collection of images to edit together. You can find these yourself, let your students find their own or use the collection of copyright free images we have already gathered together for you. Photos For Class is a great sources of Creative Commons images if you want to look for your own images. 

You can find and download our prepared collection here. Open the link and choose Download all or right-click the title of the folder and choose download from the list. Remove the images from the downloaded zip folder and save them to your shared area, where the students can access them. Before the lesson, log on as a student and test that your network permissions allow them to open images from this location. 

 

 

We would also recommend keeping a backup of the folder saved somewhere else, perhaps in your own Documents area, just in case students accidentally move or delete files which can then cause problems for others. With a backup you can simply copy and paste images back where they should be.

 

Main task

Open Pixlr.com E and start a new empty page. Click Create New and choose the Web 720p option. 

 

 

Next, if they haven’t already, tell the students to have a good look through all the images they have available. You may also wish to give them the option of being able to look for their own images if there’s something in particular they want to add. Pixlr has an excellent built in search tool for stock images that you have permission to use. You can do this from the Pixlr E home page or from the File menu > Stock search

 

Ask the class to consider the following before creating their design:

• What sort of planet do you want to create?
• How should it feel?
  • Friendly?
  • Hostile?
  • Beautiful?
  • Peaceful?

 

They should consider elements they’d like for the foreground, the distance and some planets or moons in the sky. They may also want to add other elements such as trees, buildings, lightning bolts etc.

Start with the image you’d like to use for your sky. Rather than just opening it, go to Layer > Add image as layer. This saves any copying and pasting between image files. Once it’s on the page change its size (Edit > Free transform - remember to hold Shift as you resize it) so it fills the whole width of the page. The height is less important as we’ll layer up other images on top of it, which will cover the bottom half of the screen.

 

 

Go back to Layer > Add image as layer and choose your next image, something to go in the distance of your land. Remind the students that they don’t need to use the whole image and they can just pick parts they like from different photos. Select the part of the image you want to keep using either the marquee or lasso tools. The marquee tool lets you drag a rectangle or ellipse (see extra tool options at the top of the screen when you select the tool) to select part of the image and works well if you want nice straight sections of something. For anything else you’ll have to use the polygonal lasso and cut around things.

 

 

Here, we’ve just selected the cliffs in the distance from the image. 

 

 

We want to get rid of everything else in the image apart from the area we’ve selected, how could we do that? Invert the selection (Edit > Invert selection) and press delete or backspace. Use the move tool to position it where you want and Free transform it if needed.

Deselect everything on the layer when you are finished with it (Edit > Deselect all).

 

 

Repeat this for your next layer, choosing something for the foreground.

Don’t forget you can adjust the size or position of any layer if things don’t quite match up and you have gaps showing. The eraser tool can also be useful to tidy up edges or remove parts of images quite quickly, remember to change its size for detail or larger scale work. 

 

 

Keep repeating this process adding elements, cutting them out, resizing and positioning them. 

Remember you can change the order of the layers so things in the foreground are on top. For example, the tree on the left of the image here is on layer 7 and had to be moved to the top so it appeared in front of the buildings in the distance. Just drag and drop the layers in the Layers control box.

 

 

Once you have all the separate elements in it’s time to start adjusting the colour and lighting to try and make them look like they are not actually a collection of parts from different images.

For each layer go to Adjustment and Hue and Saturation and experiment with changes to the Hue, Saturation and Lightness. Encourage the students to really think about the Lightness in particular to help tie it all together. Having one part bright and bathed in sunshine while other parts of the image are dark will look odd. Also, remember, you can’t change the colour of anything that is black and/or white as there’s no colour in the image to alter.

 

 

 

Shadows can be added by first duplicating a layer. Then select the copied layer and go to Adjustments > Hue and Saturation and take the lightness down to -100 so  the layer is black.

 

 

Then right-click the copied layer and adjust the transparency down to around 40.

 

 

Finally, go to Edit > Free distort and use the top handles only to position the shadow beneath the object. Pay attention to any other shadows that are already in the image and make this fake shadow match the direction in which they fall.

 

 

 

Apply the distort when prompted.

When you are finished, zoom right out to check if there are any rough edges that need cropping away and then flatten the image into one layer for saving (Layer > Flatten Image)

Then save and download your work as described in the previous lessons. 

 

 

 

Plenary 

Ask the students to swap seats with a friend, take a good look at your partner’s image and consider:

• How many separate elements do you think they used in their alien landscape?
• Did they do a good job of matching things together with colour and lighting?
• Did they ‘cut things out’ well with the lasso, marquee and eraser tools? 

Ask students to share their feedback with each other and then return to their own computer.

• What are you most happy with in your work?
• Could you have improved anything?
• What was the hardest part? Why?
• Could you do it again independently?
• What skills have you improved and what do you still some practise with?