Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [26]
STEP 22:
One last thing to do: A vignette will really help darken the edges and draw our attention to the motorcyclist. So, create a new merged layer one last time and then change the layer blend mode of the new layer to Multiply to darken the entire image. Add a layer mask to the layer, grab the Brush tool, and use a large, soft-edged brush (with your Foreground color set to black) to paint away the darkened layer from the motorcyclist and the motorcycle. Reduce the Opacity to tone it down a bit, if needed.
Final Image
4. Senior Portrait
Another great use of compositing is for high school senior portraits. It’s become a really hot trend to take seniors out to a cool, fun, or dramatic location for their graduation photo shoot. But, with compositing, you don’t have to take them anywhere. It really has a ton of uses for this style of photo: maybe the weather didn’t cooperate on the day of a location shoot, maybe you don’t have the location that works for your subject, etc.
Prepping the Background
The background for this one is an outdoor basketball court. It’s got a nice blue sky behind it, along with a city skyline. It’s cool, but doesn’t do much if we’re looking for something edgy here. Once we add some dramatic clouds and a few effects, it’ll look totally different, though.
STEP ONE:
The subject we’ll be placing in this background is wearing a basketball uniform, so while we’re going to go with a basketball-themed background here, we’ll take it in a very dramatic direction. First, open the main image for the background. It’s pretty simple at this point: a basketball court with a city skyline in the background.
©ISTOCKPHOTO/JOSE GIL
STEP TWO:
Since we’re going in a dramatic direction for this one, let’s add some really dramatic clouds in place of the blue sky. We’ll need to make a selection first, though. Now, I know I’ve been touting the Quick Selection tool with Refine Edge as the best selection tools around, but for this one, we’re going to use another selection tool called Color Range. Since the sky is all blue, it’ll be the fastest way to select it. So, go to Select>Color Range to open the dialog.
STEP THREE:
The way Color Range works is that, with the Select pop-up menu set to Sampled Colors, you click on the color in your image you want to select. In this case, it’s the blue sky, so just click with the eyedropper on the blue sky. If you have the Selection option turned on (below the preview window), you’re going to see a black-and-white preview of your selection. Everything that’s white is now selected, and everything that’s black isn’t. You’ll see just a small area of the sky shows up in white at this point.
STEP FOUR:
There’s obviously more than one shade of blue in the sky, so we’ll need to add to our selection. To add to it, press-and-hold the Shift key and click in other areas of the blue sky. Each time you Shift-click, you’ll add more blue to the selected area. Don’t forget to Shift-click inside those areas in the fence right above the skyline.
STEP FIVE:
You’ll also notice a Fuzziness slider near the top of the Color Range dialog. Fuzziness pretty much loosens the edges of your selection. At 0, the selection remains very tight and only the colors you clicked on will be selected. As you increase the Fuzziness amount, the edges loosen a little and become softer, so more areas around what you clicked on become part of the selection. I found 15 works pretty well for