Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [41]
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Tip: Reselecting the Same Area
If you want to reselect the same area you previously had selected, go to Select>Reselect and Photoshop will automatically bring up your last selection.
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STEP SIX:
Next, we’ll add some contrast and darken the city a little. Click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Curves. Click in the middle of the curve and drag it downward. Then, click on the Create a Clipping Mask icon at the bottom of the Adjustments panel (it’s the third icon from the left, and looks like an Oreo cookie with the top being pulled off). While you’re at it, let’s darken the road, too. Just press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and drag the Curves adjustment layer you just created down above the road layer. Holding the Option key copies (not moves) the adjustment layer to wherever you drag it.
STEP SEVEN:
There is some pretty bright light coming from behind the clouds, but we don’t see any of it in the foreground, and we really want to take people’s attention off the city. So, we’ll use a trick used in Chapter 4. Press G to select the Gradient tool from the Toolbox. Click on the down-facing arrow next to the gradient thumbnail in the Options Bar to open the Gradient Picker, and choose the second gradient from the top left, which is Foreground to Transparent (circled here). To the right of the gradient thumbnail are the gradient type icons. Click on the Reflected icon (the second from the right), then set your Foreground color to white by pressing D, then X.
STEP EIGHT:
Click on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to create a new blank layer. Then, position your cursor in the middle of the buildings and click-and-drag downward to the bottom to add the gradient on this layer. It creates a white gradient in the middle, and the gradient appears to fall off as it gets further away from the middle. This gives the appearance of adding a lot of light to the background. If it’s too bright, then reduce the Opacity of the layer to around 70%. It’s a bright light wash like this that lets us “sell” the composite more easily and keep the focus on the subject that we’ll be adding. When you’re done, go to File>Save and save this as a PSD file.
The Portrait Setup and Extraction
If you’re shooting this type of photo with processing it in Photoshop in mind, one of the best things you can do is give yourself a lot of options. Get multiple poses and multiple angles, so you have more options in Photoshop later. Set up one pose and fire off two photos. Then, have the model move and fire two more off. Then, change your angle and get down lower. Don’t overshoot the same pose. Constantly move and constantly have the model move. That way, when you’re done, you have lots of photos to work with and lots of options for compositing, depending on the background you choose.
STEP ONE:
Here’s a photo of the studio setup for this example. You can see the two strip lights with grids on the sides. This gives us that nice edge light, which is not only great for adding some mood to the photo, but also helps us extract the photo from the background a lot faster. Directly in front of him is a beauty dish with a diffuser on it.
STEP TWO:
Just so you know, I’ll typically take at least 100 photos during a shoot like this. Sometimes I know exactly what I’m looking for, and I’ll start with a certain pose. Sometimes I don’t, so I’ll take a bunch of different poses from different angles. In this example, I kinda knew the general pose I wanted. It was a low camera angle with him either bouncing the ball or slamming it on the ground. However, I wasn’t sure what background I was using yet, so I made sure