Print Collages

Design Notes:

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During my time with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division (The Marne Division), I quickly became acquainted with the stories of two decorated, historical figures who had fought with the 3rd Infantry Division during major combat operations.  One is First Lieutenant Audie Murphy and the other is Sergeant First Class Paul Smith, both Medal of Honor Recipients.  I was given the opportunity for a project to create my own design and piece of work.  I decided to create a portrait of SFC Paul Smith with a copy of the Preamble of the United States Constitution as a background layer. As soldiers, we took an oath to "...support and defend the Consitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."  SFC Smith fought and died according to his Oath of Enlisment.  

 

Design and Development:

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First I downloaded a public domain image of SFC Paul Smith supplied by the U.S. Federal government and imported it into Photoshop.  I then enlarged and cropped the photo to look more like a portrait.  Finally, using the cropped and resized original image, I selected and masked out just SFC Smith, removing the original background entirely and replacing it with a second public domain image of the Preamble of the United States Constitution.  

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I wanted to match the two images, so decided to use a weathered portrait style.  First I used a layer to create a sepia tone by adjusting the hue/saturation values (H15, S18, L2).  I then added a second sepia layer to clean up the first layer a bit (H15, S14, L2).  Then I used the Filter Gallery to add noise.  Once the colors of both public domain image matched in sepia, I matched the hue/saturation of the Constitution to match the hue/saturation of the photo of SFC Smith more closely.

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I decided to turn the portrait into a cluster of photos that could be used for a printed display as one piece or several individual pieces that create the entire portrait.  I started out with a new layer to create the individual shapes and created a New Guide Layout to create a non-destructive overlay that would help me compose the individual shapes.   Using the rectangular marquee tool, and with assistance from my guide overlay, I selected different sections of the portrait, filled the selections black, and added a drop shadow.  

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Lastly, I created a Clipping Mask on the main portrait layers and resized the portrait to put SFC Paul Smith's face directly in the center shape.  Voila.