Lego and PhotoShop

Yes, two of the most fun things in the world, together. I could add one or two other things to the mix, but then my brain might implode.

My nephew has been expressing a lot of interest in PhotoShop lately. Which I think is great!

He had a book about ghosts from the library the other day. Tried to convince me that ghosts are real. “Look! See! Here are photos of them!” On the one hand I felt bad about being such a bummer, but I felt I had to break it to him that those were all examples of advanced for their time photographic techniques. That when people didn’t know any better, it was easy to fool them. “These aren’t ghosts buddy, they’re hoaxes. People may well have done these to get rich off of. There’s nothing honourable about profiting from bamboozling people.”

I took him over to the computer, opened PhotoShop, found a picture of one of his school pals standing against a blue back ground (made it very easy to crop her out - didn’t want to spend too much time on the demonstration) turned her about 35% opaque, found another picture, dragged the selection over, and presto, his pal was now a shimmering ghost.“What I just did is a more high tech version of what people were doing in a dark room 100, 150 years ago.”

On the one hand I felt bad about bursting his bubble, and yet at the same time I want to make sure that he is media savvy. I guess you have to start that conversation at some point.

Coupled with that, he’s been expressing a desire to have a blog to show his Lego creations, “just like Uncle Thomas has.” To him it’s the most natural thing in the world. He’s grown up with it. Yet there are some thorny issues surrounding a 7 year old wanting to have a blog. While on the one hand I think it’s great if it inspires him to want to make stuff, practice writing, learn about taking photos, using a computer, etc., there may well be some bigger issues involved in it that he doesn’t entirely grasp yet.

While babysitting him for a while on Saturday, we of course spent a delightful hour making stuff out of Lego. I let the box of parts speak to me and I felt “wheels.” So I made a car type of thing. He told me his creations was going to have wings. And of course, it ended up with a whole bunch of blasters. Can’t forget the blasters.

When we were done he asked if I could take some photos. “And then could we do what you did with those photos? You know where you made it look like it was flying?”

So we went outside, snapped some pictures in the backyard, and then back inside to give him a lesson in PhotoShop.


Showed him a whole slew of things, and I heard the phrase “That’s amazing!” several times. I don’t know how much of it he’ll retain, but you gotta start somewhere. I told him that I’ve been using it since day one, and I’m still learning things all the time, so not to feel bad if he doesn’t remember everything. 

Explained to him the concepts behind masking. “Remember when we were painting the wall and we put masking tape along the edges so we’d end up with a nice straight line and the paint wouldn’t go on the baseboards? Well this is sort of like that. Pretend that I’m putting tape all around the edge of your ship. That way I can paint over it and not get anything on the ship itself.”

I didn’t get too fancy with it, and none of this is anything I’d put in a portfolio necessarily. But the main aim was to introduce him to some fun stuff you can do with PS. And I think I succeeded in inspiring him.

Showed him the clone tool and what it could do, and that elicited a “That’s amazing!”

“Can we do another one?”
“Sure.”

“That’s so awesome! Can we do another one?”
“Sure.”

Tried to take a few photos against the sky, but this is the only one that turned out halfway decent. Would have gone back to do more, but after the computer noodling, it was dark.

Probably touched on way more things than he can possibly retain, but he prattled on about it the rest of the night, rightfully amazed at the awesome power of PhotoShop. (I may have just blasted Adobe and their handling of the whole FreeHand debacle, but PhotoShop is something I can’t fault them for.) I hope these two introductions to some of its capabilities inspires him to want to learn more. I’d be delighted to sit down with him any time and teach him anything I have learned over the years. I was already an adult when I got my hands on PS. Imagine what a kid could do with it.