This started as just a bit of a joke when my partner this morning accidentally said,
"Shall we watch Boris Gump tonight?"
When I'd stopped laughing I stole ermm… borrowed some imagery from the interwebz to make up 'that picture' from the movie.
I quickly tidied up some extraneous 'noise' & people from the background, as it was going to conflict with my added title, & also poor Tom's head got similar treatment.
I got a pic of the alluded-to politician, facing approximately the same way, so head, shoulders, neck twist ought to match up. Some drastic resizing, a mask & some edge feathering & I plonked him in place.
A hopeless lighting match, of course, but beggars can't be choosers.
All to do now was to try to get the picture quality & lighting to match. Boris's head was a great deal sharper overall than the movie frame.
I re-shaped the lighting to try better match the rear sun & front soft light fill with airbrush, dodge & burn, colour-matched to the best of my ability & softened both Boris & background until they are an almost match for overall 'image quality'.
An hour or so later I had this. It's kind of OK but it's not really that convincing.
It still doesn't quite sit right to me.
It might be fine for your average Facebook post, but I feel there's more that I could have done.
Is there something I missed, or am I biased because I know it's "photoshopped" & keep directly comparing to the original? Or is this just 'the best you can hope for' from such disparate image sources?
Of course, the more I look at it, the more I'm bothered by such as the front soft light pushing Forrest's shadow to camera left, even though the sun is low & back left...
My original images are larger than this & the above are just screen shots from Ps, but I think the overall look is preserved to demonstrate the issue.
The work was done in the last Ps CC 2020 Mac (not looked at 2021 yet).
After comments
I pushed the lighting harder left & removed some additional distractions behind the feathering. Better but still missing something.
gif of before/after lighting changes.
New composite.