How to Cheat in Photoshop

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Posted on 26/09/14 08:22:43 AM

Steve Caplin
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Posts: 7025

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Challenge 524: Flying hippos

My friend Chris took this photograph of a floating hippo sculpture on the Thames in London - and very fine it looks too. In the background, you can see the remains of Battersea Power Station on the left.

Pink Floyd fans will remember the cover of their 1976 album Animals, on which was depicted an inflatable pig flying over the same building. On the album cover the pig was rather small, but the event was reenacted for subsequent photographs.

Can you rebuild the bottom half of this hippo, and fly it over the same location? You can find a shot of Battersea Power Station here, or source your own.

Here's Chris's original photograph:

And a high res image of just the hippo is here.

Posted on 26/09/14 10:19:12 AM

DavidMac
Director of Photoshop
Posts: 5675

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

Despite being a huge Pink Floyd fan, I shall have to miss out on this one. Back to India again on Sunday.

Pink Floyd started life as a college band at the AA college of architecture in London. Nick Mason, the drummer, had a father who was a documentary director specialising in motor racing (he owned a vintage 1920's Bentley tourer and an early Aston Martin DB). As a very young cameraman I shot for Bill Mason, the father, in the very early nineteen sixties and he told me then "My son has got together with some other guys from college and started a band. Call themselves 'PinkFloyd'. They are rather good actually!". Little did he realise then .......

Nick Mason inherited his father's love of vintage cars and started collecting vintage racing cars. When Floyd came to an end he started a company called "Ten Tenths" which rented these cars out for filming and so forth. It's become a great success.

Now you can impress your friends with a piece of Pop/Racing trivia.

Posted on 26/09/14 2:14:52 PM

GKB
Magical Montagist
Posts: 4005

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

I remember working at Gatwick the day that the pink pig broke loose and caused chaos within the London Terminal Control Area as it could not be tracked on radar; fortunately it drifted north east and didn't cause us any problems at Gatwick but the Stansted / Luton area had an 'interesting' day.

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Posted on 26/09/14 3:00:44 PM

shaneworth71
Meticulous Montagist
Posts: 27

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

I really had no good ideas for this one.

Posted on 26/09/14 6:41:47 PM

ahmedalij
Atmosphysician
Posts: 262

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

Posted on 26/09/14 7:38:26 PM

Ant Snell
Specular Specialist
Posts: 566

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

Posted on 27/09/14 01:40:13 AM

TheBlueJam
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Posts: 35

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

You are killing me with the file size. I'm saving for web and it's not good enough?
Mine's stupid anyways x

Posted on 27/09/14 02:11:33 AM

TheBlueJam
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Posts: 35

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

Seriously, Ive been through all the preference blah blah. No matter how i set my image size it's still going tiny. I've been using .ai for stuff that i should be using PS for. is it a bug?

Posted on 27/09/14 08:17:11 AM

GKB
Magical Montagist
Posts: 4005

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

Hi Jane-Ann

Flatten the image, reduce the size of the longest side to 850 pixels, Save for Web using a quality setting that gives you just under 100Kb - et voila!

Gordon

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It only seems impossible.

Posted on 27/09/14 09:01:35 AM

TheBlueJam
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Posts: 35

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Re: Challenge 524: Flying hippos

Hey GKB - cheers for the feedback. Shouldn't really do this stuff after the pub! My settings were .png and in my alcohol marinated body didn't think to check. Still confused on the original settings, though. I was doing a web banner yesterday (sober!) 960px x 110px and it was so tiny when it shouldn't have been. Oh well, more to worry about today - namely praying that Everton beat Liverpool

Thanks again GKB