A taste of ABC Open

Here's a step-by-step guide to how I made the above image without spending hours in the orchard trying to breed 'Open' apples.

 

I used Photoshop Elements to put together this image but you could use other image-editing programs like Aperture or Gimp to do something similar, the commands will probably just be named slightly differently.

 

Step 1. Find a colleague who has brought an apple to work and intends to eat it today. Luckily I spied a promising candidate on the desk next to mine.

 

Step 2. Take a photo of the apple with a bite taken out of it. Thanks to our Rural Reporter Owen Grieve for being my hand model.

 

Step 3. Find the second image you want to superimpose on your base image. In my case I wanted to superimpose the ABC Open logo over the apple photograph.

 

Step 4. Convert this second image into an image format that supports transparency, like GIF. You can do this by using the 'Save As' or 'Save for Web' option and selecting GIF as your file format.

 

Step 5. Use the Magic Wand tool to select all the background white in the second image. I found I had to also right click and select 'similar' for the tool to pick up all the white within the words.

 

Step 6. Hit delete to remove the white in your second image and make the background transparent.

 

Step 7. Add the second image as a layer on top of your base image (usually you can do this by dragging and dropping the second image into the base image in the project bin at the bottom of the window). Position and resize the layer to get the effect you want.

 

Step 8. You can also play with the opacity of the second image layer for a more natural effect. In the image above I've set the opacity of the second layer at about 75%.

 

And voila you have an Open apple!

Done