I thought I would start a little series called “The Making Of” where I share with everyone how I make the various Photoshoped images over in the Photoshop Phun page. To start us off, I’ll share how I made my latest creation, “Lost Pirate.”

By just looking at it, you may not know all the little tricks involved in making this image. Can you guess how many different layers (or multiple images) there are within this picture? The answer is 8. On the right is a screenshot of some of the different images that I used (click image to enlarge).

The first one is obviously the background, which is a picture I took on the Oregon coast. I thought it would be perfect for the “Lost Pirate” because that is the same spot where the filming of The Goonies took place. If you remember, that big rock is where they see One-Eyed Willy’s ship emerged from the cave.

To get started, I didn’t just simply open up this picture and start putting stuff on top of it. Oh no. Not only was there color change involved to make the scenery look more tropical, but I also had to remove about seven or eight people (not including a kite and a huge log). That is easier said then done. Remember, I’m not a pro or anything. I’m just a normal dude like yourself (unless you are a professional Photoshop user).

Then there is the Pirate himself (thanks Jeremiah). As you can see in the “Official Making Of” screenshot above, both his legs and hands were omitted from the picture. So, to remedy this, I grabbed a hook and some guy dressed like a pirate from the internet (is that illegal?). In order to make the hooks work, I had to adjust the arms so that they are pointing outwards. Then, to use the legs, I had to cut out the upper body of the guy dressed like a pirate, and after all that, I tried to connect the legs to the upper torso of our Lost Pirate by distorting and adjusting it. Basically, it was trial and error to get it to work. Finally, we had to put some makeup and hardcore facial hair on our subject. After all, what is a pirate these days without makeup and some Backstreet Boys facial hair, right?

So now that we have our completed pirate and completed background, what else is left you ask? Well, after I had put Mr. Lost on the background image, it just didn’t feel right. Something was missing. “Ah! A shadow,” I screamed.

I started off knowing exactly what I was going to do, but it ended up being way more complicated than I thought it would be. First, I had to copy and paste the image of the Lost Pirate that was just completed. Then I had to distort and mold it in a way that made it look like it was the same picture only laid flat on the ground like it had gotten ran over by a steam roller or something. After about 5 minutes of doing that, I had to adjust the images opacity so that it was see through. Then, I had to “blackout” the image so that it would finally look like a shadow.

There you have it. The creation of “Lost Pirate” in a nut shell.