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Tracy Willis -The cat in the bowl - part 3 of 1 2 3 4

by Mike McNamee Published 01/02/2017

Donald the goldfish was a very small but vital part of the story so an iPhone image was more than adequate resolution even in such a large image.

The Photoshop File

Examining the layers palette reveals just how much fine detail was attended to in the 30 hours or so that the image took to assemble. There are 50 image content layers, 24 adjustment layers and 57 masks (give or take!), the layer colour-coding and naming shows Tracy's organisation - it would have been a logistical nightmare otherwise. We show her layers palette, although the detail will not be visible as it extended over many screens.

The cat is placed onto the water on top of the work surface. Squeak was added late in the development of the image but adds an additional element to the story, almost appearing to mock the cat who has tried unsuccessfully to get the goldfish, got stuck in the bowl and now can't catch a mouse either!

The file is nominally 10,000x7,800 pixels and occupies 8.1 GB as a scratch file in Photoshop – this is not a job for a laptop! It would take too long to dissect the image layer by layer but at least it gives a flavour of what goes into making an iconic image such as this.

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1st Published 01/02/2017
last update 09/12/2022 14:52:20

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Tracy Willis -The cat in the bowl - part 3 of 1 2 3 4