I was playing with this photo in Photoshop, and for craps and giggles I thought I'd see how well I could cut it out from the background and then fake a believable new background and shadows for it. Here's what I ended up with:

Original (Photo by slipstar01):


Photoshopped:

nice man, pretty good! the only thing that needs work is the shadows below the feet, needs to be smaller and tighter since it's where its touching the plane of the ground. you could also soften the edges around him to meld him more into the new background.

Good call on the softening the edges and the shadows around the feet. I also added some more shadow between the legs and tail. New version:

Was bored enough to try something...

^ Hm, pic seems to be borked.

Not that I really care about this, but is it common practice nowadays to use other peoples photos willie nillie, without asking permission...? I'm a photographer, with photoshop, and am wondering if I should really be watermarking any images I put out? Like I said it was a snapshot, and I could personally care less, but I'm wondering how much this sort of thing happens when I don't know about it..?

Oh sorry Michael! Totally didn't think to credit you on the original.

I'd say it's best to credit the original photographer whenever possible, and to say something to the effect of "please let me know if you don't want your photo used" somewhere in the post.

I try not to use others' photos for anything other than talking about an existing product or for my wants thread. Obviously I would need to use others' photos for the wants thread because I don't have the items, but it's definitely a good practice to credit the original photographer when possible.

And as far as this particular thread goes, I actually originally started messing around with it in Photoshop when I was trying to identify it. I tried using Google Images' ability to find visually similar images to identify it, but I thought that it was getting hung up on the background. So I cut it out from the background and had it on a white background, but Google still couldn't find it. Makes sense though, since it's a custom. Then when I had it cut out, still in Photoshop, I was bored and started editing the background more less as a practice exercise. I'm a graphic designer by day, so it's pretty normal for me to play around with stuff like that. Usually they stay on my own computer and never get seen by anyone, but this one was fun so I thought I'd share it. Thanks for being okay with it being used like this!

honestly, i'd be flattered if people used my photos

Like I said I'm not pissed, but when your going to school. and getting a degree in photography, it goes beyond feeling stoked that other people are using your photo's. I have photo's that are online, that I've sold in galleries and I would be pissed if anyone used them... This isn't a big deal, but it does make me think about watermarking things I care about...

Again I don't take any offense TC, do you use Tin Eye?

Nope, never heard of Tin Eye. Just looked it up though, and it looks pretty useful. Gonna play with it some tonight.

assume you know enough about internet culture to realize that once a digital version of your work is posted on the web, it is subject to being used without your permission (whether it be photos, videos, music, whatever)

i personally use CC licenses on my photos and music... all about encouraging people to share and interact with the works while still attributing the original source

that said, if you are serious about maintaining control over your copyrighted photos (particularly if you are selling them in galleries) just don't put them on the web

my humble opinion

Yeah that's good advice, but doing a lot of promotion through the internet makes it a lot harder to follow it. I wish there was some sort of technology that would scramble photos as soon as you tried to copy them... I don't use creative commons licensing unless I really don't care about a snapshot. I always mark them all rights reserved, but I noticed, that some peoples photostreams on Flickr, wont let you right-click and copy. Does anyone know how to set photos so they can't be copied?

I know that creative commons can be a good thing, for everyday people, but it's also putting the stock photo companies right out of business. The reality of the business aspect of photography is that if your not a fine art photographer working galleries, you have to change your marketing model about every six months.

My photo teacher was telling me about technology that's being developed so type is almost invisible at a small scale, but as soon as you try to enlarge a photo it quadruples in size... I also know a lot of photo hackers, have been using photoshops CS5's content aware healing tool to make Copyright placement virtually useless.