How The Image Was Made
The group was arranged on the outside utility access stairwell of
Wean Hall. A 35mm SLR was used to photograph the group on print
film. I later did some long exposure photographs of our Intel Paragon
Supercomputer to provide the black panel and lights of the final image.
4x6 proofs of both images were scanned using a SilverScan II flat bed scanner
at 400 dpi, using some initial gamma correction. Adobe Photoshop 3.0
was used to rotate the image of the group to correct for a slight angle
in the original image. Then, the image was warped to correct the backward
tilt of the original image (the photographer had to point the camera slightly
upward when taking the picture because there was no surface at the same
level of the stairwell for her to stand.) The lasso tool was used to
do an initial selection of just the members of the group, which was then
refined using selection expansion and feathering. This selection was
then used as a mask. The original intent was to do a color based selection
using the fact that Wean Hall is a sort of uniform grey, but this proved
unsatisfactory.
The Paragon image was significantly cropped, color enhanced, and unsharp-masked
to bring out the lights. Then, it was tiled to produce the "big Paragon"
look. This result was pasted into a new layer of the group image, and the
the group mask was used to make the group members appear in front of the
paragon image. The "front" of the "stairwell" was then selected and
the motion filter was applied to it to provide differentiation between the
"front" of the stairwell, and the "back" of the Paragon. Some minor lines
were added to strengthen this differentiation. The group was then
unsharp-masked and the edges of the selection were feathered (with a light
color) to further improve the differentiation. Finally, all layers
were flattened and the image saved as a JPEG.
Peter A. Dinda