Creating An Easy Peel Banana
Create Altered Reality
It is fun to create imaginative improvements to natural substances. In this case, I added a zipper to a banana to make peeling easier and to seal the banana back up if it was not all eaten.
I started with a partially opened banana setting on top of a bowl of fruit. A tripod is needed so that you can take multiple pictures of the fruit bowl and have the banana with and without the zipper overlay perfectly.
I used a Nikon D5100 with a Nikkor 85 mm Micro Lens to get in close to the subject. I used the camera in manual focus so that the focus on the zipper and on the banana pictures would be the same.
Process The Photograph
Post processing in a photo editor can remove hot spots and undesirable objects.
Using the photograph above, I cloned out the highlights on the apple and the brown streak on the banana using Photoshop Elements 9.
Add The Zipper To The Fruit Bowl
I purchased a zipper that had cloth with a contrasting colour from the metal zipper. This contrast made the selection of the zipper teeth easier. A plastic zipper with the same colour cloth would have made the selection process much harder.
I opened the zipper to the same length as the open banana peel and laid the zipper on top of the open banana so that the shape of the zipper teeth would curve the same way as the banana peel. A photograph was taken of the zipper on the banana. Again, a tripod was necessary so that all pictures would line up perfectly.
Carefully Select The Teeth Of The Zipper
With the selection tool in Photoshop Elements 9, I carefully selected the metal teeth of the zipper. I switched to the "mask" mode occasionally to better see where I had to improve the selection. The red in the photograph to the left is the mask.
Overlay The Selected Zipper Onto The Banana
Once the selection was complete, I copied the selection and pasted it as a layer over the photograph of the banana. I then used the Transform tool in Photoshop Elements to finely adjust the position and location of the zipper on the banana.
Finally, a drop shadow was placed on the zipper teeth to give them more depth. The Burn and Dodge tools were used to place slight highlights and shadows on the banana peel.
There you have it! A banana that can be easily peeled.