Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [42]
STEP THREE:
Go ahead and open the photo we’ll be working with. As you can see here, I opted for the wider-angle close-up photo of the basketball player. The photo will open in the Camera Raw window. Right off the bat, I can tell it’s a little warm, but I’m not going to make any adjustments yet. We’ll want to make sure we give ourselves a way back and forth to Camera Raw, so press-and-hold the Shift key and click the Open Object button at the bottom right of the window to open the photo as a Smart Object. This way, when we see the photo in the final composite, we can always double-click on its thumbnail to come back to Camera Raw and make adjustments.
STEP FOUR:
Press W to get the Quick Selection tool, and start painting a selection on the basketball player. And, because I’ve said it so many times before, I won’t even mention here that you should zoom in and use a smaller brush to make sure you get all the details around him (oops, I said it, didn’t I?). Anyway, since he’s wearing such dark clothes that contrast with the background, the Quick Selection tool should make a good selection pretty easily here. Once you’ve got the general outline, zoom in to the feet and get them as close to perfect as possible, because that’s a key area to pull off the composite and make it look real. If you over-select an area, then press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key to subtract from the selection.
STEP FIVE:
When you’re ready, click the Refine Edge button up in the Options Bar and then press the W key to change the View setting to white. Since we have hair in this one, turn on the Smart Radius checkbox and set the Radius to 10 pixels to try to pick up the edges. Now, move your cursor over the photo and brush around his hair at the top of his head, as well as along his arms and legs to get all the details. Set the Output To setting to Layer Mask, and click OK when you’re done. You’ll have one layer in the Layers panel with a layer mask attached to it. Don’t forget, if any of the edges seem to have dropped out, you can get the Brush tool (B), set the Mode in the Options Bar to Overlay, set your Foreground color to white, and paint over those edges on the layer mask to bring them back. Go to File>Save, save it as a PSD, and get ready to move on to the composite.
Creating the Composite
This composite was a lot of fun to create. Once the background is done and the athlete is selected, our main goal is to make him fit into the final image. Because you often need to actually put someone onto the background before you can figure out what to change, I used a Smart Object and Camera Raw to help out a lot. After that, the shadows on the ground played a huge part of pulling this one off. And perhaps the most fun part for me was the cracked concrete on the ground. It really helps to add to the intensity of the overall image.
STEP ONE:
Open the background image we created earlier. If you didn’t follow along, don’t sweat it. The finished background is ready for you to download. If you did follow along, though, then go to Layer>Flatten Image to flatten all of your layers into one.
STEP TWO:
Now, open the selected basketball player. Again, if you didn’t follow along, just download the image and you’ll already have the selection done for you. First, we need to move him, so press V to get the Move tool and drag him onto the background image.
STEP THREE:
He’s a little too bright to fit into the background right now, so let’s fix that first. Double-click on his layer thumbnail to reopen the photo in Camera Raw. Reduce the Exposure to around −0.80, increase the Fill Light to 70 to bring out some details in the shadows, and reduce the Vibrance to −26 to take some of that color away from the photo. Don’t click OK yet. We still have one more change to make.
STEP FOUR:
His arms, legs, and shoes are still too bright compared