A little while ago, I had an idea for a composite image involving an image of an old pocketwatch that would be used over and over again. However, it would be too easy to make the composite with just one image. All the watches would have the same time, and would simply just not look convincing in the final composite. So in order to have the watches reading different times, I could scan the watch multiple times. But that would limit me to having the time reading on the watch at the time of scanning. It would also mean making isolation masks for each image. Too much work, too many files! The only solution would be to work on a master file that would let me change the time at will. This route would certainly require much more work to accomplish as each hand on the watch would have to be isolated and moved to its own Layer. Then using Photoshop's Free Transform I would be able to move the hands to whatever position I wanted.

To get the hands isolated I used the Pen Tool to draw a very precise path around the watch hands. When the path was completed I then made a selection from it in the Path Palette. From the Layers menu I then chose New Layer Via Copy, this would place the hands on their own Layer. I then made a duplicate of this Layer as I needed to separate the big and small hands of the watch in order to control them individually.

Once the hands were on their own Layers, I then turned off their visibility and returned to the Backgound Layer. Now I needed to clone away all the hands. As you can see I made a little more work for myself by having the big hand over the 10 o'clock position! But hey this is where you can flex your muscles with some Photoshop trickery.

Now with all the hands cloned away and the background totally cleaned up I could then procede to the Transormation stage of the project.

As a sidenote, now with each hand on its own Layer, the Layer palette should look like this. At this point I also added small drop shadows to the larger hands for more realism. Now to Transform...

With the Big Hand layer selected in the Layers palette I then chose Edit-Free Transform.

Rotating the Big hand at the default setting would result in the rotation occuring at the center of the hand. This would put it out of position relative to the center of the watch. Now, using the arrow tool (while still in Free Transform) I then moved the Center point to the center of the watch.

Now the rotation would procede as expected with everything revolving around the center of the watch. Using this technique I am free to set the time to be whatever I want!

By using this technique I was able to control all aspects of time and create a composite that looks totally convincing!

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