Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [64]
STEP 12:
Let’s add some text at the top. Select the Horizontal Type tool (T), press D, then X to set your Foreground color to white, and click to start typing. The font I used here is Varsity Regular (I got it for free from www.dafont.com/varsity-regular.font) set at 30 points. If you need to move the text after you type, move your cursor away from the text until you see the arrow cursor, then click-and-drag it. Press Command-Return (PC: Ctrl-Enter) to lock your text when you’re done, then click on the Add a Layer Style icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Gradient Overlay. This time, add a gradient that goes from the tan we used in Step Five on the right to a slightly darker tan on the left, then turn on the Reverse checkbox, and set the Style to Reflected.
STEP 13:
While you’re still in the Layer Style dialog, add a Drop Shadow layer style and a Stroke layer style to help lift the text off the background a little (you can see my settings here). Keep the stroke small, though, and make sure you set the Position to Inside, so it keeps the edges crisp. Click OK when you’re done to close the dialog. Here, I created two more Type layers for the year and the other text. Notice I made the year a little larger (about 62 points), too. Now, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the Layer Style (fx) icon in the Layers panel, and drag it onto each of the other two Type layers to copy the styles to them. I also added all three Type layers to a group to keep things neat.
STEP 14:
Open the logo image and drag it into the composite in the bottom third of the image. Make sure the logo is on a layer above the group with the ellipses at the bottom. Use Free Transform to resize it, if necessary. Then, add the same Stroke layer style as you did to the text, and add a Drop Shadow layer style with the settings you see here.
©ISTOCKPHOTO/ID–WORK
STEP 15:
Finally, add some text for the dates at the bottom. The font for this text is Myriad Pro, and I used Bold for the two headers at the top (Football and Soccer) and Regular for the dates and opponents. To help keep things tidy in the Layers panel, group these Type layers together, too.
Adding the Athletes to the Composite
I mentioned this earlier, but adding the athletes into the composite is probably the easiest part of all this. Once your background is looking good, it’s just a matter of a few selections and you’re done. Now, none of these athletes were photographed in a studio. These were all taken during live games, so our backgrounds aren’t nice to work with. But you’ll see that the Refine Edge dialog still totally rocks here.
STEP ONE:
Open the first athlete photo. Use the Quick Selection tool (W) to select as much detail as you can. I say this over and over again in this book, but I think it’s most important here. Make sure you spend the extra time to zoom in and get that selection as good as possible. You’ll probably have to make your brush really small to get all of the edges of the uniform, the hands, helmet, etc., but because we don’t have a nice clean background, we need this edge to be as close to perfect as possible. That way, when we go to Refine Edge, all we have to do there is smooth it out a little. Don’t worry too much about the feet, though, because they’ll be hidden.
STEP TWO:
Click the Refine Edge button up in the Options Bar, or just press Command-Option-R (PC: Ctrl-Alt-R). Turn on the Smart Radius checkbox and set the Radius to 6 px. There are no stray or wispy hairs or edge details to worry about, so we don’t need the Refine Radius tool