145 layers

I was very fortunate to work with a great team recently to produce a photo that i was very very happy with. I photographed 142 individual people one evening over a span of three hours and spent the entire next day selecting people and pasting them into this one comp. I have done this type of work before several times but this was the most amount of people i have done in one image. I used the photoshop 6 beta and it worked perfectly. Not one hitch or crash, however i did save often. For selections i used the quick selection tool and then the refine edge command with smart radius selected with a radius of 10 pixels and a feather of .3. For most i then had to zoom in and use quick mask to tweak my selection as patterned clothing did not select well and the white hats had some troubles also. I used an action for refine edge as i did it on each image. I would then drag the person onto the comp and use another action for matting - defringe by 1 pixel. I then just arranged the layers for look which was the fun part. I was exhausted after this job was complete but it was well worth it when i saw the look on the conference attendees faces when they saw it for the first time.