Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [6]
6. Don’t Kill Yourself on a Selection If the Detail Isn’t Important
Here’s a good example: Jessica, here, was originally photographed on a gray background. After selecting her (and her hair), and placing her on a white background, the edges of her hair look horrible, right? If I plan on putting her on a bright background, then this is definitely a problem and something I’ll need to fix (I show you how, by the way, in Chapter 1). But, if I plan on putting her on a darker background, take a look. Perfect! I didn’t change one thing about the selection—only the color background that I placed her on. The point here is: don’t waste time where it isn’t needed or won’t be noticed.
7. Darken the Feet
This is one of the best-kept secrets in the compositing world. If you’ve got a full-body composite, and you place a person’s feet on the ground, one of the telltale signs that it’s fake is typically going to be around the feet. It’s really hard to get shadows and lighting to look perfect when the person wasn’t really standing there. We have tricks that we can do (and we will in the book), and one great way to hide what was done is to take people’s attention away from it. Since we’re drawn to looking at the brighter parts of a photo, darkening the feet helps keep people from focusing on them and the fact that something may not be quite right. Trust me, from this moment on, take a look at every ad or movie poster you see where you think something may be composited and look at the feet. Nine times out of 10, you’ll see it’s darker at the bottom.
8. Don’t Include the Feet
This is another great secret in the compositing world. If at all possible, create the image so that you don’t have the feet included. You’d be surprised at how much feeling, movement, and mood you can create in an image, even if you don’t see the person’s entire body. Again, keep an eye out for movie posters and magazine ads, and you’ll see that most of the images that seem like they must be a composite don’t even have the people’s feet in them.
9. Color Gives Everything a Common Theme
One of the hardest parts of compositing is not necessarily putting various photos together. As you’ll see, it’s not really hard to select a person from one background and place them on another. What is more difficult is getting both the person and the background to share the same overall mood and color temperature. Color really does tie everything together, and it gives everything in the photo a common link. As we work through the book, we’ll use a number of different tricks for this, like adjustment layers and blend modes, as well as a plug-in.
10. The Compositor’s Secret Weapon: Plug-ins
Let me be the first to say that I know plug-ins aren’t cheap. And I hate it when I read something that talks about all these third-party plug-ins you need in order to complete a tutorial. As if Photoshop isn’t expensive enough already, along with all the photography gear you need to take the photos. So, here’s what I’ve done: anyplace that I use a third-party plug-in, I first show you the free way to do something similar in Photoshop. You’ll find that the free way has two issues, though: (1) it typically doesn’t look as good as the effect we get with the plug-in and (2) it takes much longer than it does with a plug-in. If you’re into compositing, plug-ins will make your life easier, plain and simple. These are the plug-ins I use:
Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro Complete
This plug-in gets used just about every single day in my work. Whether I’m compositing or not, I use Color Efex Pro. But for compositing, it’s got so many filters that help finish your work. I swear by the Tonal Contrast filter, which I use to finish off just about every one of my composites and backgrounds. The Bi-Color filter adds some really nice color to your photos. I use the Brilliance/Warmth filter on every landscape photo I take. Bleach Bypass is a great effect for portraits. The list goes on. I think these effects should be included in Photoshop, but they’re not. Sure,