10e20 Blog

OK- so you have some cool new images you have been working on or maybe the latest photos of the family, and you feel the world should be able to see them.

Instead of risking imprisonment and going into your local museum with a framed piece and a tube of glue like Banksy (more here) you could follow this tutorial and send the images off to your friends and family and say, “Hey-My works in the Louvre and MOMA!”. Then they will say, “Yeah-right…” and you can all share a laugh.

You will need a photograph of some people in front of paintings or framed work at an exhibit from a museum or gallery- the more famous the better (museum not the people)! But this can be tricky since most museums do not let you take photos inside. Some cool ones do, but for ridiculous reasons most don’t. You can always sneak one or two in before the security gets all up in your face.

Next you will need that photo/art work you want to share with the world-ER…museum goers.

I just love this photo of my niece Isabella and her dog Mookie.

I grabbed a few from my trusty subscription based stock photography site, also Flickr is a good place to look, search under Non Commercial and the Flickr Creative Commons pool. On that site, you can search through 22 million photos for shots that are being legally shared by photographers, under flexible copyrights licensed through and you can use them worry free- unless you are selling something with the image.

Step 1. Set up the document. Place the photo of the museum on the bottom layer and the image you want to composite on top of on the layer above.

Step 2. On a new layer create the shape of the picture and the people. This can be done in Photoshop with the Pen Tool. Make the trace clean and precise, all you want is the picture-not the frame and the part of the people that is in the picture plain.

Step 3. With the photo or art work you want to composite on the top layer, click on the layer in the Layers Palette and select Create Clipping Mask. This will allow you to move the photo around and position it anywhere within the shape defined in the layer below.

Final: Adjust the colors and Levels to make the illusion complete. Image/Adjustments/Levels or Auto Levels will make your blacks black and whites white. An Adjustment Layer may be good to throw on to the final piece as well to make it seem cohesive and not so obvious.

Have fun!

If you do not have a picture of a museum and you can’t find one anywhere you can always go to this nifty little site Museumr that will do all the hard work for you. They only have a few photos to choose from, but they come out nice and clean just the same! Give it a try- takes a second.