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This background didn't turn out at all the way I originally had it planned out in my head, mainly because I couldn't find the right source material. I do like the way it turned out though, and it only took an hour or so :)
Basically I started with just two images - library.jpg[1] and orangutan.jpg[2]. If you check out those two pics, you'll notice a couple differences right away - first, there's a librarian where I've got an orangutan. Second, the orangutan is a lot smaller in the finished product and tilted at an odd angle (9 degrees :)). The more astute of you will notice that the librarian was a lot taller than the Librarian, and there are books where her head used to be.
My first task was to seperate the subject from the background in the first picture. That was easy enough, I just used the lasso and eraser[3] in Photoshop. Next step was to resize and rotate the bugger so he'd look OK in relation to the desk.
The only thing I had to do to library.jpg was to blow it up (either 125% or 150%, I can't remember), and Blur it a few times to get rid of pixelation.
Getting the Librarian's arm behind the stuff on the desk was a bit complicated... I ended up pasting library.jpg into another layer, and deleting everything except what I wanted on top of his arm. Then I erased the goofy looking parts.
Then I took off the librarian's head using the same method as before... I copied and pasted in some of the books and used the airbrush and pencil to get em to look semi-decent.
I should have noticed this earlier, but I blocked off half a lamp with the Librarian, so I had to use the paste&delete method again.
To finish it all I just saved the original library.jpg's color index to an .ACT file and applied that to my finished product[4]. Embedded my watermark, made the JPGs and BMPs, this little file, and uploaded it to the web. At this point, I thought I was done, but then my friend Dirge gave me some tips on how to make the Librarian look much better. I, of course, bunged all these up, and he sent over the excellent version you see at the top of the page. Go download that one if you haven't, it's much much better.
Enjoy,
[1] Originally from Corbis
[2] Originally from Beginnings - A history of the Carnegie Library at Pomona College
[3] First I used the block setting, then Airbrush at 50% pressure.
[4] I tried greyscale first but it just didn't look right.
