Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [34]
I originally thought I’d place all the subjects on a nice, clean, white background. But, once I started creating the composite and had them on a white background, I had another idea. I found an excellent photo of the interior of a building. It looked like a really fancy hospital with lots of bright sunlight coming in and it fit perfectly with the photos. That said, if you or your client still prefer white, you’ll see it’s just as easy.
STEP ONE:
Open the background photo you’d like to use. In this example, you’ll see it’s got a nice, clean look, which fits well with the medical theme that we have. It’s also got a lot of window light coming from one side, which works really well with the nice edge light we used in the studio.
©ISTOCKPHOTO/MANUELA KRAUSE
STEP TWO:
Open the three photos with the subjects already selected from their backgrounds. They should each be on their own layer if you followed what we did in the previous tutorial. Using the Move tool (V), drag each of them onto the background image, so they’re all in the same document. We’re going to want the doctor to appear in the front, so if he wasn’t the last one dragged in, in the Layers panel, drag the layer with the doctor to the top of the layer stack. You can also move any other layers that you want to at this point. Here, I’ve also moved the blonde nurse to appear second in the layer stack.
STEP THREE:
Now, they’re probably going to be too big for the background image. So, starting with the top layer in the Layers panel, go to Edit>Free Transform. Click on a corner handle, press-and-hold the Shift key, and drag inward to resize the image (if you can’t see the corner handles, press Command-0 [zero; PC: Ctrl-0]). Keep an eye on the W (width) and H (height) settings in the Options Bar and remember the percentage setting from this first subject (in this case it was 50%), because you’ll need to resize the other people by the same amount, so the perspective and overall size of one subject compared with another isn’t off. Press Return (PC: Enter) to lock in your transformation, and then do the same thing for the other two images.
STEP FOUR:
Once you have them in place, we’ll need to add some shadows. We’ve got two things that’ll cause shadows in this example: First, look at the shadows on the bottom right of their noses. We can tell that there’s a light source coming from the front left (remember the main light in the setup shots?). This will cause anyone in front to cast a shadow on anything that is behind and to the right of where they’re standing. Next, anyone standing in front of someone else will simply cast an overall shadow on the person behind them, because they’re blocking the light from hitting them.
STEP FIVE:
Layer styles have a lot of uses and shadows are a perfect example. But, we’re not going to use the usual Drop Shadow layer style for this one. Instead, click on the Add a Layer Style icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Outer Glow to open the Outer Glow options in the Layer Style dialog. Since a glow is usually bright, we need to change a few settings. First, change the Blend Mode at the top from Screen to Multiply, then click on the color swatch and change it from yellow to black.
STEP SIX:
Right now, the outer glow is just a small, dark fringe around the doctor. So, try increasing the Size setting to spread it out more and widen its reach. I set mine to 200 pixels. I know it starts to spread out from behind the doctor’s head, too, but we’ll take care of that in a minute. When you’re done, click OK to close the dialog.
STEP SEVEN:
Obviously, we have some problems. The shadow cast on the nurses is fine, but it has also cast behind the doctor’s head into thin air. To help fix this, we’ll need to put the shadow on its own layer, instead of leaving it as a layer style. So, go to Layer>Layer Style>Create Layer to put the shadow on a separate layer below the doctor.
STEP EIGHT:
Click on the new shadow layer to make it active, and with the Move tool selected, press the Right Arrow key on your keyboard a few times