Stress, Tension and Strain

• This started off with an empty tin of sardines – thoroughly washed.

  The background is metal particles, known as carborundum from a hardware store.

The other image required is that of a man's face with a strained expression.

• It was given a blue cast to make it look more severe.

• The face image was dragged on to the image of the sardine tin.

• In the Layers panel, the face image was set to 50% Opacity.

• A path was drawn around the tin's opening, then converted to a selection.

• A small Feather then the selection was inverted.

• The unwanted parts of the face were deleted and Opacity returned to 100%.

The lip of the tin would create a shadow around the face so that had to be added.

• A new layer was added for the shadow.
  A soft black brush was set.

• With the path active, the path was stroked with the brush.

• The path was converted to a selection and the brush stroke outside the selection and outside the tin was deleted.
• The Opacity of the shadow was reduced to 60%.

Finally some reflection of the face needed to be added to the roll of the lid.

• The layer with the face was duplicated.

• With the Transform tool, it was reversed and adjusted to line up with the edge of the lid.

• The Opacity of the reflected face was greatly reduced and much of it was erased, to leave the reflection over the curved area only.

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