Photo manipulation...

I love editing pictures... although, I do it only occasionally, because it always takes too long! In this case, I took a lovely frame from a painting at the Musée du Louvre in France and put my picture into it.

Original

Finished Product

I actually messed up a little bit, I realized after the fact that the picture is not exactly lined up correctly and that there's a bit I should have cleaned off the bottom of the frame. However, overall I'm fairly impressed.

So, what exactly did I do? Obviously, I cut out the frame. However, I also had to rotate it and alter the perspective. I also removed the text from the plaque by using the color pick tool and spray painting over the old lettering... I used a lighter color to start with, and then added a darker shade over it in a fuzzy broken up pattern lightly, to create a similar texture to the original surface. I then used a sensible font and wrote my name on it. :)

[UPDATE] Here's an alternate version... I added a closeup of me that had a painting effect and created a shadow to give the frame extra dimension...

 New edit: painted-style image, shadow