More Lies, More Fakes...

 

    Apologies are clearly in order as I keep lying to you guys-with me telling you what to expect from me every post. So I tell you not to expect many fakes this month, and here I am with six more for you guys. I'm not sure what has come over me, but here we are. Let's get into it:

    I will say that I don't think any of these exceeded any expectations. These are certainly not my best works, but the ideas were there and I was able to execute my vision pretty well. The Winnick fake took more work than expected; lots of micro-editing that took me longer to get right than I'd like to admit. The Carpenter fake is probably my least favorite out of the set. I decided to be different and make her brunette (which there was a brief period of time that she was), but it didn't do as much for me as I thought it would. Now, the Dakota fake was very surprising to me. It was a face swap on Evelin Stone, and it turned out better than most swaps typically do. I can't say as to why that's the case, but with a few edits, I think it turned out pretty great. 

    Of course, there is one more fake that definitely needs to be talked about. I decided to make a composite fake once again-meaning merging two images to make a single, cohesive work. The only time I recall doing this was with Danielle Rose Russell and Freya Allen, and that was back when Photoshop's first Generative AI features rolled out. I decided to give it another try in Photoshop Beta. The reason? Photoshop Beta lets you try features that will be brought into Photoshop proper in a future update. In this case, I wanted to try the Harmonize feature. Essentially, it uses Generative AI to give an image or subject the proper lighting and shadows relative to the background image. This was something that would take so much time to do manually, and not something I believe I could get good at. So I decided to give it a try. Now, I thought that it wouldn't work due to guidelines-as that is something I have to work around with Generative AI-but to my surprise, it actually did it. With that possibility opened, I went to work with a renewed and vested interest...

    But I'm not totally pleased with it. I had to make so may compromises for various reasons-the main reason being that since my PC isn't that high end, attempting something like this was problematic. I was facing various crashes, complete freezes, and having to do work over and over because Smart Filters couldn't load things properly. As for the image itself, there is a lot of dead space that I hate is there, but had to keep to make the image make sense. I also had to rely on Generative AI more than I like to with having to extend the image, create a more consistent looking background, and fill in some of that dead space. I like to think of this fake as a proof of concept and a good learning experience. I will definitely be attempting more composite fakes in the future with some interesting pairings that I hope activate your neurons in the same way mine do. And if you're wondering on why I chose to pair Lauren Cohan and Cailee Spaeny, all I can say is that there wasn't a particular reason at first, but when I thought about it more, I believes that they could pass as a hot mom and daughter combo in some movie or show. Sometimes, it's just as simple as that.

    With all that out of the way, I hope you enjoy the fakes. I'll see you next time and as always, stay safe out there.