Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [49]
STEP EIGHT:
If you look at the background, you’ll see it already has some smoke in it. But, I think it’ll look cooler if we add some more. Images like this are perfect candidates for using stock photos, since we typically don’t have photos of smoke just lying around. As you get into compositing more, though, you’ll find that you’ll start taking photos of anything you see, and smoke is one of those things you should definitely start building a library of. You just never know when you’ll use it. Anyway, I went to iStockphoto.com, searched for “smoke,” and found this photo on the first page of the results.
©ISTOCKPHOTO/PLAINVIEW
STEP NINE:
Go ahead and open the smoke photo (iStockphoto.com was kind enough to allow me to provide it to you in the downloads). Using the Move tool, drag it into the composite image and then, in the Layers panel, make sure it appears directly above the Curves adjustment layer, but below the lens flare layers (as seen here).
STEP 10:
Change the blend mode of the layer to Color Dodge and reduce the Opacity to 85%. This helps the smoke blend into the background more. In fact, whenever you have smoke, mist, fog, or any other texture with black behind it, try the Color Dodge or Screen blend mode. It’s a great way to drop the black and only leave whatever texture happens to be on the layer.
STEP 11:
Let’s position the smoke layer toward the bottom of the image a little, so the smoke is rising toward the top, but not in front of his face. Now, the only problem I still see is that it’s just a little too bright near the bottom. It almost looks like fire, which can be cool at times, but not for this photo, so let’s remove some brightness. Press Command-U (PC: Ctrl-U) to open the Hue/Saturation dialog, then drag the Lightness slider to the left to –33, and click OK. We can still see the smoke now, but it just takes the edge off of some of those bright areas.
STEP 12:
Every rock star needs their fans, so it’s time to add the crowd. Go ahead and open your selected arms photo from the last tutorial and drag it into the composite. Or, if you decided not to make all the arm selections yourself and just downloaded the arms PSD file I created for you, drag the Arms and Hands layer into your composite (that’s the one I’m using here). Since the smoke is mainly up on the stage, you’ll want the arms to be in front of it, so place the layer above the smoke and position the arms at the bottom of the image.
STEP 13:
Let’s use a little depth of field to help pull this off. Since the singer is in focus, we can blur the arms a little. So, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, set the Radius to 5 pixels, and click OK. Now, the arms have just a little blur to them, which does two things: (1) It helps “sell” the composite—since the focus should be on the singer, the arms would naturally fall out of focus just a bit. And, (2) it helps pull attention away from the arms and onto the singer. We want the arms there, of course, but we don’t want them to attract too much attention.
STEP 14:
Whenever I have a lot of lights in the photo, I usually add some extra lighting up front to help give the feeling of a wash of light falling around the subject. So, create a new blank layer at the top of the layer stack. Then, press the I key to get the Eyedropper tool, and click on the background to sample a bright orange color. Select the Brush tool (B), and with a large, soft-edged brush set to 10% Opacity, paint some light brush strokes over the lights. Just click a few times instead of dragging and actually painting. Remember, this layer is above all the others, so it’ll have the appearance that the light is wrapping around the singer from all angles. If it looks too bright, lower the layer Opacity a bit.
STEP 15:
If you’ve been following along with any of the other edgy-like composite