After the two recent additions to my Speedmaster Case Back Collection I received a few questions asking about how the images were created. In light of the questions I received, I thought I would share with those interested the process of how the recent images were created.

While I have the vision of how I would like the piece to look and be presented I do not have the skills to create the images that would best represent the astronauts accomplishments. With that said, I have been fortunate enough to work with the talented artist and graphic designer Neil Smith who created the fantastic Apollo Mission Patch video here a few years ago. With Neil’s help and talent we were able to create the two most recent images for Scott Altman and Kathryn Sullivan.

Here is how it happens using the recent addition from astronaut Scott Altman as the example. Commander Altman’s piece was a great addition for his STS-125 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) final servicing mission singed on an X-33 case back.

The process begins with finding an appropriate background image that captures the look and feel of the piece taken during the actual mission. In this case, I wanted to use and image that would allow me to add the addition of the patch and the case back while still allowing interesting components of the image to be visible in the background.

Here is the original background image taken during STS-125.



Once the background image was selected I took a few images with a card stock test piece I created that is the same scale as the original case back along with the patch from the mission.



Once the correct scale of the patch and case back was established I laid it over the background image to see how it would fit along with the proposed text telling the story of the piece. The composition of the image created the look of the robotic arm manipulating the case back and the patch was well represented and displayed.



After the fit check I replaced the test case back cutout with the actual signed case back. The interesting thing about the X-33 case backs is that they do not have the circular brushed finishing on the interior so the X-33 case backs are much easier to photograph because the light is not reflected in a hundred different directions.



For this piece I though it would be an interesting idea to incorporate an actual image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope after the new cameras were added to Hubble during the STS-125 mission. From the hundreds of images I settled on the Star-Forming Nebula NCG-3603 because I thought it made a nice replacement for the actual embroidered telescope spectrum field in the patch. The dark blues in the image were a perfect replacement and fit well.



I laid out where I though the best part of the HST image was for Neil to see.



In the final image Neil picked off the stars in the original embroidered patch leaving the texture in place. When the actual Hubble image is layered under it, it allows the image to bleed through so the image appears to be embroidered like the original patch.

After I have all the pieces together I send them to Neil who makes the magic happen. Neil creates the image and then sends it back to me for review. I’m a stickler for clean lines and making sure everything looks good. So I pick out small details to clean up and send it back for a revision.

When the final image is returned I add the text to the image and combine it with the secondary supporting image and they ready to share.





And that’s how you create a fake X-33 Speedmaster case back space picture.