manipulation project help

[cendres]

I was doing a fun project to be used as a birthday card to my mother-in-law from her grandson.

The original image began as a shot of my son's birthday cake.
I did a quick & very dirty clone job, to get his name off the cake and attempted to recreate the icing with her name. My method was as follows:

1)color sample the real icing to get a color
2) painted "grandma sally" (can't remember the brush style)
3) Used bevel & emboss with a texture, style was inner bevel, technique was smooth. Some of the other settings were
Depth 151%, direction-up, size 7 px, soften 4 px, angle 39, altitude 30

The things I can see right off is the lighting doesn't match very well, but its the best I could get. Any suggestions on this problem would be helpful.

I probably should have used a larger brush to try and better match the size of the actual icing.

I may want to do this again sometime down the road any suggestions as to how I might do this better would be appreciated.

Here is a link to take a look.

http://24.251.78.85:8080/carl/ron_images/graphic%20art%20images/armycakeweb.jpg

[Rick]

I don't think you did a very bad job at all, but I do agree that perhaps you should have chosen a larger brush and brush type. The only thing I would have noticed about the lettering is how small it is. But on something that's lettered by hand, you can't exactly expect consistancy in something like that.


Rick

[DJ Dubovsky]

Not bad Carl. You matched the icing color pretty good and the icing itself looks great. I agree about the larger brush size. I would also sharpen the lettering a bit to match the original and sharpen the distance of the shadow just a bit. You got the shadow direction very good. These are minute modifications that I had to really scrutinize to see. Excellent technique and very convincing work.
DJ

[Vikki]

Actually, your icing looks better than the original! I would suggest covering the original lettering with "frosting", and recreate all of the lettering yourself. That way it will all match too.
It came out good anyway, I really couldn't see any telltale signs of rework.

[T Paul]

Very nicely done. I agree with all the rest that a larger brush is needed, but just slightly larger. You did a good job matching the color or the icing. As for getting the lighting to match the original icing, try just a touch of white to highlight the icing’s peaks like the original. You can use an airbrush or paintbrush. Also if you have a plastic filter or plastic wrap filter you could play around with that effect until it matches the original icing. Vikki has the best idea though. I agree with her that cloning out all the icing and creating the entire message yourself is the way to go! I also like your icing better than the original.

-T

[DJ Dubovsky]

Yes, I think Vikki had the best idea also.
DJ

[cendres]

Thanks to all who have offered their suggestions. I do believe Vickki's idea makes a lot of sense. I also tried to do a little airbrushing some highlights based on t's recommendation and I think that helped as well.

I remembered when I originally did the "grandma" icing I had a problem fitting it on the cake so I resized it down slightly.

Thanks again to everyone for their input - Carl

[jeaniesa]

Carl, I agree with everyone that you did a great job! I think Vikki's idea makes a lot of sense and will try to remember tuck that away for myself if I need it in the future. Also, I noticed the shadow like DJ did. It looks a little too wide - almost like the lettering is floating slightly off of the icing. So, I would tighten the shadow a bit. BUT - I'm amazed at how well you were able to really make the new letters look like icing! Great job!!
Jeanie

[Mig]

If you still have the psd file, you can transform the lettering to make the angle of the letters appear more on the same plane as the others on the cake. Also, on a duplicate of this letter layer (just in case you made a mistake) you can dodge the letters or paint on them to recreate the highlights as they are in the other letters. Still a nice job.