Thursday, 12 January 2012

Great Train Robbery Image

Great train robbery


For the event of the Great Train Robbery there weren't any images of the incidents as in those days there were no CCTV cameras operating therefore only images of the location of the incident were available. At first when I researched this historical event I thought of incorporating some of the events that occurred that night like the red light signalling the train to stop, or the separation of carriages, the loading of the money and postal bags on the truck. There was a very limited variety of images in which I could incorporate the events I mentioned previously therefore I decided to focus on the criminals behind the robbery. I listed there names on my previous blog on the train robbery but when it came down to finding images of each individual there wasn't much. I would have liked to have had an image with the photos of the 15 criminals involved but seeing as I wasn't able to get a hold of all of them due to poor quality images or images taken of them at a much older age I focused on Ronnie Biggs whom everyone believed was the mastermind of the robbery. 


The image I found best to incorporate in my project has been extracted from:
http://www.rnw.nl/data/files/images/lead/060809%20Ronnie%20Biggs%20politiekaart%20EPA%20ANP-489472_0.jpg 






Steps I Took To Produce My Image


I opened up photoshop and selected to create a new document. Once I had my new document opened I selected the Rectangular Marquee tool. I then drew a large rectangle slightly smaller than the actual page document selected the bucket tool, I filled the rectangle with a light beige colour (#F1EBDB) I selected the Lasso tool and randomly drew jaggered lines on the edges of the paper with no order once I had selected it I pressed on delete. The selected areas were removed according to where I had drawn with the Lasso tool. I repeated the same method for the other 3 sides of the rectangle. 




I selected Layer and then on New Layer to create another layer for my image. This time I choose a darker shade of beige (#EEDEB3) this was the medium shade layer. I created a clip mask on this layer by clicking on CTRL+ALT+G.




After I created the medium shade layer I went and created another layer and this time I filled the background with an even darker shade to the one I just created previously. This layer was the darkest layer (#C3B48D). I went to Layer and I selected Add Layer Mask and the on Reveal All so that a layer mask would be added to the layer I was working on. I also created a layer mask on the medium background layer. I then selected Filter, Render and on clouds. I did this step for both the layer masks I created. I then changed the opactiy to 72% on the darkest layer




I went to File, Open and selected the image which I had extracted from the internet, once it was opened I selected Layer and on Duplicate layer. I clicked on the Magnetic Lasso tool and selected the area of the image that I want to use. I dragged the Image onto the background which I had created and name the layer Ronnie Biggs.




Since the image is a different colour to the one i'm creating I went to Filter and in the drop down listed I selected Blur and then Gaussian Blur with the Radius 3.3pixels.



In my Dark Background layer I went to image adjustment variations and clicked on more red and more yellow. This gave my image a Sepia effect. 




I created another layer this layer is for the title of my wanted poster. I selected the text box and drew a square at the top of the page. For the font of my text I decided to choose Eras Bold ITC with the text colour #907225. I decided to also use the Gaussian Blur with the radius 3.3pixels. 




Since the background is slightly yellow to give it the effect that the paper is older I decided to smudge the text so that it goes with the spoilt effect of the background. I selected Filter, Artistic and on Smudge Stick a window appeared with options, I set the stroke length to 2, the highlight area to 13 and the intensity to 5. 




I repeated the same process for the rest of the text although I changed the font sizes. The text underneath the main title has a font size of 36pt and font size 48pt for his name. I also added the Smudge Stick and Gaussian Blur to the other text.




The background was too yellow therefore lowered the opacity of the Dark Background layer down to 40%. I then selected the Lasso tool and drew small, random sections on the sides, I pressed delete and this gave it the effect of having cuts in the paper. I made these cuts in the layer of the Light Background as it had no other masks or effects in it. I wanted to add a sort of dirty effect to my image so I created a new layer and filled it  with a grey background #999595. I then selected the burn tool and used it in random areas to make it look more realistic. In order to blend the grey background and burn tool I lowered the opacity down to 20% which made it lighter and blended it to the rest of the background. 




The image of the criminal was too yellow from the sepia effect so I clicked on the drop down menu of the image and selected luminosity. I also added a Drop Shadow to the light Background. 




Final Image









I choose to create a wanted sign as many of the images available on the great train robbery were poor quality. I gave the background an old, torn effect as the image of the criminal that I was incorporating was poor quality. I blurred out the image and the text so that I would have a faded washed out look as if the paper had been tampered with a lot or had gotten wet with the bad weather as these posters would have been displayed in the streets. The jagged edges and cuts on the page also help to give it an old effect. I also blurred out the images as back then photos etc... weren't very good quality compared to nowadays. This is why I also didn't crop out the image of the criminal accurately, the edges were jaggered and some extra bits of the original image were still left on the one I used. 

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