Photoshop: a fast fix

Credit: Photo Illustration by Rockinon

I do a little reporting for an online citizen-reporter driven newspaper called the Digital Journal. Writing for DJ is good practice for someone who's still thinks he may someday be a reporter/photographer.

Today I was asked to write a piece on a report by an influential research group. The report recommended opening the Canadian telecom industry to foreign investment. My story, Canada's telecom industry needs foreign participation, needed some art and it had to be ready in minutes.

I took my cell phone, turned it off and on so that the Bell name was momentarily displayed, and took two quick pictures. The exposure setting for the first picture captured the cell phone screen and the Bell name. The second exposure overexposed the screen but captured a fair picture of the cell phone itself.

I took the two images into Photoshop and selected the screen showing the Bell name from the one image and pasted it on top of the second image. In levels I viewed both layers but only activated the one with the screen and the Bell name. Using skew I distorted the screen to overlap the blank screen in the second image. The handles are found in each corner of the selection. When I was happy with the results, they weren't perfect but they would do to illustrate a news article, I merged the layers and saved the image.