Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [53]
STEP NINE:
For the first layer of the image, go ahead and paint with white all the way down the ramp on the far left of the photo. That way, you’ll reveal the snow that he kicked up as he was starting his jump.
STEP 10:
One layer down, 12 more layers to go. The process is pretty much the same. Move to the next layer down and Shift-click on the layer mask to disable it (so you see the big X over it). Then, take a good look to see where the snowboarder is in that image.
STEP 11:
Shift-click on the mask to re-enable it, then click on it to make sure it’s active, and with a white brush, start painting on the next image of the snowboarder to reveal him. It’s okay if you’re not perfect when you paint the edges, but try to stay as close to the edges of the snowboarder as possible. Now you’ve got two snowboarders revealed.
STEP 12:
We’ll continue working down the Layers panel, revealing each image of the snowboarder. But, when we get to the third layer from the top, something interesting happens. Take a look at the image here. I started painting around the snowboarder and, as you can see, I wasn’t really careful with the brush size and it extended pretty far away from the snowboarder. See what happened as a result? The sky appears to be a lighter blue on this layer than it is on the other layers. This can happen for a couple of reasons: First, if you had your camera set to Aperture Priority (and not Manual) mode, the exposure could have changed slightly. Also, if you have your camera set to Auto White Balance, the white balance may have changed a little, too. It’s easy enough to fix this, though.
STEP 13:
If the background does change in brightness or color, then it just means you need to be more precise when painting the subject back into the photo. I mentioned that I was pretty loose with the brush in this example, and went way outside the boundaries of the snowboarder for this layer when I painted with white. So, just press the X key to swap your Foreground color from white to black. Then, zoom in even closer, decrease the size of your brush, and paint the unmatched sky away. But, don’t go too far or you’ll hide the snowboarder again.
STEP 14:
Continue down the layer stack until you get to the bottom. If you come across any layers where the images of the snowboarder overlap (which can look really cool, by the way), you just have to pick which image you’re going to choose to be in front. I usually choose the version that’s in the direction they’re moving. In this case, he’s moving to the right, so I’ll choose the version on the right to be the one that’s in front and hide any parts of the version on the left behind it. You may have to go to the previous layer’s layer mask to adjust it to hide the overlapping parts. It’s kind of a creative choice, though, so try it both ways to see what looks best.
STEP 15:
When you’re done, you’ll have the snowboarder flying through the air. Make sure you save this one as a PSD file with all of the layers, in case you need to change anything later. You don’t want to have to do all of that work all over again.
Final Image
10. Movie Poster
If there’s ever a final product that absolutely screams of compositing, it’s a movie poster. Think about it. Movie posters often depict something that’s not real. The artist and designers creating the poster have to take all the elements they’re given and create this unrealistic scene that actually looks real. Real enough to sell the movie.
The Setup
We’ll approach this from the aspect of someone creating a movie poster who’s been given certain photos and information to work with. The movie’s name is The First Samurai and we’ve got a samurai, a Japanese castle, and a few other things to put together.
BACKGROUND:
The background is a Japanese castle. The sky is pretty nice, but we’ll want something a little more dramatic.