In Mom's Eyes, I Can Do Everything

Every once in a while I get myself in trouble. People think that I am a technical guru—not because I know a whole lot about everything, but because I know a little about things, but a bit more than they do.

Yesterday will give you a perfect example of what I mean.

We generally have dinner with my parents every week on Monday nights. I get home from work, we get Munchkin in the car, and we head over there. We eat dinner, and while we are getting dessert ready, Munchkin starts to get antsy. She gets calmed down a bit when she gets some ice cream or whipped cream, but Dad generally scarfs down dessert because Munchkin starts to reach for him.

This week, I got home to find that my parents had brought dinner over. Dad doesn't have the Internet at his place (for fear of viruses), so his iPhone is synced to my computer. He had some updates that he needed, so we hooked it up after dinner to get all his updates.

Mom was also interested in altering some pictures from our most recent vacation. I had played with Photoshop a bit before, and told them that I might be able to help. Mom, being the woman she is, just expected that I would be able to do everything and anything she wanted with the picture right then and there. While the iPhone was updating, Mom and I started in on the picture.

The main thing she wanted was to remove a few pictures from the background. I figured it would be easy enough. I started trying to use the filter and extract them out the right way, but I couldn't figure out how to fill it back in (because I wasn't playing with any other layers besides the original. After messing with it for a while, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get it to work with what I had. I left it up overnight just in case I was wrong (but I wasn't).

So tonight I decided to start anew. I remembered that layers were a good thing, and so I was able to get the pictures out without it looking too terrible. I realize that this doesn't look perfect, but I was having fun, so I decided to replace three heads as well, just to see if I could.

Here are the results. Let me know what you think.

Before, including four pictures, two distracted babies, and one squinting father

After, including some very sloppy edits, but I'll pass it by Mom and Dad to see if they notice...

If you have any hints to help me make this look more realistic, please let me know. I played a bit with the blur tool and did the best I could to recreate missing hair/body parts. The true test will be when they blow it up to hang over the mantle...