American in Spain

Mini Me 2 - The iPhone

January 30, 2009
Mini Me using iPhone (cropped)

by erikrasmussen, on Flickr")Mini Me is, after all, me, so he's gotta have an internet connection. The problem is he struggles to push the mouse around and dance around the keyboard. Luckily, it turns out that the iPhone's revolutionary touch interface is really quite usable for little people. As you might imagine, he's rather fond of this site. Mini Me using iPhone

Mini Me using the iPhone.

Mini Me using iPhone (cropped)

by erikrasmussen, on Flickr")

Cropped. It even looks pretty good large.

There's a lighting/white balance inconsistency that I couldn't figure out how to fix in Photoshop. One photograph was made with a flash and the other without. The other problem is that reflections of complex shapes, like humans, are very, very difficult in Photoshop. All the reflection tutorials use simple objects reflected on a single axis. An arm reaching over a reflective surface is actually impossible to realistically render. Obviously the reflection of my right hand should be the underside of my hand, which isn't even in the original photograph. Everything from my right shoulder down to my fingertips is reflected inaccurately because it's just not possible to do unless the original photograph were taken with me reaching over a reflective surface. But other than the incongruous lighting and impossible reflections, I'm quite pleased with the result.

The cool part about this image is that the contents of the iPhone screen is kept in what Photoshop calls a "smart object", which keeps the rotation, opacity, and effects separate from the content of the layer, so it is completely trivial to change what is displayed. Neato.

If you would like a copy of this image with your website displayed on the iPhone, I'll make you one if you promise to link to this page. Request in the comments.