The photo “Nova on Industrial Area” is the final result of an experiment made over the years, I wanted to integrate a graffiti with a slightly industrial style, with the photo of an abandoned building in my city, which represents the industrial past of the area. But also as a test to apply the technique to other photos in the future.
Over the years I have experimented with various tools, and I have tried to better learn the potential of some editing programs to find a way to better mix the manipulation of a photo with vector graphics.
The best way I found was to use masks and alter the colors of high quality photos and then blend them with the various elements of a vector graffiti.
It’s a long job full of attempts, first you have to create the basic vector graffiti, choose a photo that fits the style, or vice versa create a graffiti that fits the photo, then there is a lot to work on the colors.
To choose which colors of the photo to use and to manipulate the photo to get the best color requires many attempts, not only to obtain the desired color, but also in the parts of the photo that will overlap the vector. This is because a monochromatically reduced photo has dozens of different shades, and can be too light, too dark, of the wrong hue or with the wrong saturation.
Here are some examples of photos with altered colors:
Finally you can then proceed to apply the photograph of the right color to each desired element of the vector, creating a mask for each element, and hope that the final result is satisfactory, even here it takes many attempts and adjustments.
For example, here are some tests that preceded the final result:
