Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [36]
The Setup
The setup for this photo is similar to the setup for the doctor composite we created in the previous chapter. The only big difference is that this was taken on-location at one of the family members’ houses. See, it was the little boy’s baptism weekend and all of the family was coming to town on Saturday night for the Sunday baptism. The schedule was so tight that they were not able to comfortably make it by the studio, but did offer to let me come by the house to take the photo before they left for the church. Luckily, this setup is easy to move. So with a little help (from my buddy RC), we made it happen.
STEP ONE:
The key to this composite is that every group is standing in the same place. That way, I knew that the perspective was good and everyone would appear at their correct height when I put the composite together. I placed a piece of clear Scotch tape on the floor near their feet, so they all stood in the same place. It’s really hard to see here, but trust me, it’s there.
STEP TWO:
As you can see from this setup photo, I placed the camera on a tripod. Once I established the tripod height and set the focal length (I used 50mm for this one), I never touched it again, except to press the shutter button. Again, everything is now locked down, so the position of the people relative to the camera, the height of each person relative to each other, and the overall perspective will be perfect.
STEP THREE:
Another thing I learned from studying Drake’s work is that children need to be placed higher in the image, whether a parent holds them, or you have them standing on a small chair or box (we did both in this example). This allows us to crop the final image right above or below the knees and keep from showing the feet on the ground.
STEP FOUR:
I shot the family in two different ways, just like I did the doctors and nurses. First, I used two lights: one main light (with a medium-sized Wescott Octabank Softbox) coming from the front left, and one edge light (a strip bank with a grid) coming from the back right. You can see the setup shot here.
STEP FIVE:
Then I turned off the edge light (circled here), so it was just the one main light coming from the front left.
STEP SIX:
Here’s the result of one of the photos with both lights on. That edge light gives the appearance that there’s a bright light coming in from one side. It adds a lot of depth, dimension, and background separation to the portrait.
STEP SEVEN:
Without the edge light, there’s more shadow on the half of the face that’s positioned away from the main light in front. I’ve mentioned this before, but shooting the photo both ways just gives me more options when compositing. Sometimes you’ll find it works better for the people in the photo to use the photo with more shadows and depth, and sometimes you’ll like the ones with the hard edge light instead. Remember, options are great when compositing, so if you can easily add some options while shooting, then go for it.
Prepping the Portraits
Since everything was shot in the same lighting conditions, our main job here is to get a good selection. And since they were all photographed on a bright background (and my vision for this one was to place them on a white background), we’ll have a lot of flexibility with our selections. We’ll also mix in a little retouching of the layer mask to help finish things off.
STEP ONE:
Go ahead and open one of the family portraits. They’re all pretty much the same, so I’ll use the one I thought was the hardest to select here. Press W to get the Quick Selection tool from the Toolbox. Click to start painting a selection on the family. Remember that we’re going to crop this right around the knee area, so don’t worry too much about the feet.
STEP TWO:
Zoom in to the shoulder