The Windsor Hotel photo before
The Windsor Hotel photo after
A while back the National Trust asked me to put the public in the picture of the proposed development for the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne. I was given a photo of the Windsor hotel as it stands today and then asked to create a photoshop image of what it would look like if the proposed development were to be completed.
I had to base my artistic rendition on the developers own plans, as they had only published very tiny images to the public. The National Trust wanted to see a larger and clearer representation. But it had to be as accurate as possible based on the actual plans – well what we could see of them.
It was a very challenging job to do and required many many layers in Photoshop. I started by finding a photo of a high rise taken on a similar angle and used some of that as background colouring in layers. I filled in the side of the building with the cream colours and drew the squares down the side, filling those in with some transparency. The lines across and down the building were quite time consuming and were of different thicknesses and angles so only some could be copied and pasted. Of course critical to the effect was to create a path around the top of the Windsor hotel and all its little intricacies, so that I could cut that out from the image of the new high rise development and place it in front. I also found it essential to start with a high resolution photo with the original, so that it could be used in either print or web later on.
The image is still being utilized in the save the windsor campaign today:
The site of the Windsor hotel was historically owned by a great great grandfather of mine, so it is close to my heart that they save this landmark historic building of such grace and beauty. I wish the National Trust all the best with the campaign.
