Believe it or not, this is not a joke…I’m not kidding. It’s not hype. And it’s not make-believe. Now when you’re talking about Trillion-dollar budgets and bailouts, I realize that 1/3 of a million dollars is probably chicken feed, inside the Beltway at least. But to paraphrase Senator Everitt Dirksen (R-IL), a third of a million here, and a third of a million there, and pretty soon, you’re talking about real money. So how can I save the U.S. Taxpayers some major coin? Simple.

You see, when the ObamaNation wanted to generate some of their own stock photography, they looked in the archives, and realized nothing they had on hand would do. I mean, a shot of Air Force One over Mount Rushmore is soooooo last millennium. They wanted to update the stock photo folder with something as new and fresh as Obama himself. And what could be more fresh and exciting, you might ask, than buzzing the NYC skyline? Road Trip!

But there’s a problem. 747s are not, by their nature, the kind of plane you just joyride up to the Big Apple for a photo-op. Especially with all those United States of America and Presidential seal graphics splashed all over the thing. Even if the one you’re flying is a stunt double. Nope. These things take planning, coordination, and about $357,000, to pay for AF One, two Air Force fighter jet escorts, and their assorted crews. Now I’m no aeronautical genius – but I am a thinker – and I think I might be able to save Obama not only some coin, but some future headaches, as well as the inevitable class-action lawsuit from all those traumatized New Yorkers.

Here’s how it works.

First, you need a couple of stock photos, one of your landscape of choice, and one of Air Force One. My total Google images search time was under 10 minutes. You’ll also need a copy of Adobe Photoshop, and a laptop or desktop computer that can run the software. Sure, I already own a laptop and a copy of Photoshop, but this is civil service work we’re talking about here. Why should I scrimp when everybody else working for the government is getting rich? Since I’m in the market for a new laptop, I’m budgeting for one in the project. (Hey – if Obama can afford to jet off to Chicago for a vacation a month into his term, I’m sure he’ll twig to my need for a new computer.) My weapon of choice is a new, 17″ MacBook Pro, with a 24″ Mac Cinema Display. Since I already own Photoshop on the PC, I’m going easy on the ObamaNation, by only charging them for a crossgrade from the PC version of CS3 to the Mac version of CS4. With a couple of other things to throw into the mix (a copy of Apple Logic would be nice) I’m gonna run the total up to $6,500. The stock photos ought to run around $20 each, but let’s be generous and budget another $100. That takes us to $6,600. I’m going to charge $400 for my time. That it’s only going to take me 30 minutes to do the actual photo editing is immaterial…I need to turn a profit on the job, don’t I? So the net savings will be $350,000. Not too shabby…I get a new Mac and pocket $400, and Team Obama gets some photo-realistic stock photography – and nobody need be the wiser.

Don’t believe me? Let me prove it to you.

Load the Air Force One shot into Photoshop. Use your choice of wands, lassos, and masking tools to create a mask that allows us to grab the airplane without any of the background image.

Here’s the mask I created. If I’d had access to a WACOM tablet tonight, I could have done it faster. As it was, this took me about 20 minutes.

Not too shabby, huh. Now we’ll load the other image (the one with the NYC scene), and drag the masked plane layer onto the NYC scene file.

And finally, we can adjust the size and position of the airplane against the background.

The image on the left (above) cost the U.S. taxpayers $357,000. I’ll give the ObamaNation the one on the right for the low, low price of $6,600. Hey – I’ll even be a sport…I’d throw in another half-dozen backgrounds for no additional dollars. (I get to keep the Mac and the CS4 upgrade, though, so I’m still coming out smelling like a rose.) I can put Air Force One any where you like – Chicago, LA, Paris, Beirut – if you can find a stock photo of a city skyline, I can deliver. Plus, my method keeps the panic off the streets and in the stock markets where it belongs.

I think I’m offering Team Obama an unbeatable deal – save money, keep bad publicity to a minimum, and even act a little more green – the MacBook Pro is supposedly the greenest laptop made. Even if it isn’t, I’m still saving thousands of gallons of jet fuel, no matter what. I realize that this runs contrary to Obamanomics (tax & spend…then tax some more), but hey, they need to throw a bone to the great unwashed every now and then, and by their standards, $350,000 is a picked-over bone.

And if there’s $350,000 to be saved here, imagine the other ways we could put computers to work to save the taxpayers money! We could save on overseas travel – just take a photo of some rich guy in a burnoose, Photoshop in Obama, and voilà! – an international incident is averted.

So if you’re working for the ObamaNation, and you’re looking for a way to score some killer pics of Air Force One, but realize that suggesting another flyover is career suicide, gimme a call. I’ll be happy to help. As a patriotic, tax-paying American, it’s the least I can do, to try and soak us all for less than the ObamaNation does.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 11:08 pm and is filed under design, marketing, media.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.