It’s been awhile since I last entered into a photoshop contest, so I thought I would give it another try. Worth1000.com recently opened a contest that looked like fun as well as a good challenge. The rules: Photoshop the image on the left in any way I see fit (click image to enlarge).

Well, after staring at that marble sculpture for about 30 minutes, I realized what I wanted to do: turn it into a boat! Before I could do that though, I needed the proper setting. I rummaged through my iPhoto library until I found the perfect place for my boat…MAUI! (on right, click image to enlarge). Now that I had the scenery, I was able to start on the boat itself.

Looking at the sculpture, you might see how the middle part kinda looks like the body of a boat – I’m not sure what the technical term is. I decided to separate that part out and make it look like it was floating in the water. Without getting into too much detail, I basically duplicated the image, flipped it upside down and made it transparent. Then I took the part of the sculpture that looks like a cheerleader yelling thing (the name escapes me), and made that the sail. After looking at some pictures of real sailboats, I realized I needed to make two sails: one large and facing forward, the other small and facing backward. I applied the same technique I used on the body of the boat to make it seem like the sails are reflecting in the water.

After looking at what I had so far, I realized I was missing a mast – yes, I actually know the name for that part of the boat. I felt it would be less time consuming if I created the mast from scratch, so I drew a line and fiddled with it until it looked somewhat like a wooden mast. I think it turned out okay.

After I finished with the boat, I played with the image of Maui a little to clean it up and make it seem more focused on the boat itself. To do that, I blurred the mountains in the background and added an “Unsharp Mask.” That’s a fancy photoshop tool that makes the image look a little crisper and clean, which is exactly what I was trying to do.

I’m happy with the finished product that I submitted into the contest (on left, click image to enlarge). As of right now, there is about 20 hours left for submissions. We’ll see how it turns out. I’ll be happy if I get in the top ten.