Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [60]
STEP ONE:
Open the photo of the subject for this composite. Press W to get the Quick Selection tool and paint over him to make a selection. The only area that was hard to select here was near his upper arm and shoulder on the right side. The highlights from the flash are mixing with the bright background, so I had to zoom in and use a really small brush to get the selection right. To remove any areas from the selection, just press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and paint over them.
STEP TWO:
Once you’ve got the subject selected, click the Refine Edge button up in the Options Bar. There’s not much work to do here, since we don’t have any details. So, just set the Radius to 10, the Output To setting to Layer Mask, click OK, and it will create a layer mask for your subject.
STEP THREE:
Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to add a new blank layer below the layer with your subject. Then, go to Edit>Fill and, from the Use pop-up menu, choose Black. Click OK to fill the bottom layer with black to give us a black background to work with.
STEP FOUR:
Right off the bat, I can see we’ve got a thin, bright fringe around him. So, we’ll use the Defringe trick we’ve seen a few times throughout the book. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on the layer mask to load its selection, and then click on the layer’s thumbnail to target it. Press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to copy the selected area up onto its own layer and then click on the Eye icon to the left of the layer with the mask on it to hide it for now.
STEP FIVE:
With the top layer active, go to Layer>Matting>Defringe. Set the Width to 1 pixel and click OK to get rid of the bright fringe around him.
STEP SIX:
Lastly, his arms look like they’re just a little off balance. I wanted them to be as symmetrical as possible and they’re not. No sweat, though, because we’ve got a tool in Photoshop CS5 called Puppet Warp that can work great for compositing. Go to Edit>Puppet Warp and you’ll see a grid-like outline appear over the subject. First, we need to add points that will eventually serve as hinges for using Puppet Warp. I usually just click on the major joint areas or body parts, as you can see here. Each time you click, you add a point that you can eventually move.
STEP SEVEN:
Once you’ve got all the points created, click on the point on his hand on the right to select it (circled here). Then drag it inward, so his arm appears similar to the other one. Then, click-and-drag the point on his shoulder on the left up just a little bit. When you’re done, press Return (PC: Enter) to lock in the transformation. Pretty sweet, huh? Go to File>Save and save the image as a PSD before we move on.
Creating the Composite
Like most of the other composites, once the background and selections are done, just putting them together is easy. It’s the process of “selling” the composite and making the subject look like they belong there that takes the most time. With a few adjustment layers and blend modes, though, you’ll be amazed at how quickly we can pull this composite off.
STEP ONE:
Open the background image for the composite. If you didn’t start with the first tutorial in this chapter, I’ve got the background already created for you, so you can follow along here (you can download it from the book’s download site). We don’t need all the layers that are there, so go to Layer>Flatten Image to flatten all of the layers into one. Next, open the selected photo of Willie from the last tutorial (like with the background image, I’ve already got him selected and available on the download site, so feel free to download that image, if you haven’t already selected him). Press V to select the Move tool and drag him into the middle of the parking garage background.
STEP TWO:
The first thing I noticed is that he’s got a very warm look to him and the background has a colder feel to it. We could go either way on this one—warm the background or cool him down