Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [7]
Topaz Adjust by Topaz Labs
This one is another one of my must-have plug-ins. I use it to add an instant edgy/gritty look to my images. Plus, if I really want to add some mood and make a bright image look like it was taken at night, their Dark – Night preset (used in Chapter 10) is one of my favorites. And at $50, it’s pretty reasonable.
Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop by Red Giant Software
You’ll notice I use a lot of lighting effects in the book. Lens flares and light streaks come in really handy to bring your composites to that next level of professionalism—things like enhancing the headlights on a car or light on a building, or adding a light source based on the way light is hitting your subject. You can do all of these things with layers, layer styles, and filters in Photoshop (and I did them in Photoshop in the book), but none of them give you the professional quality light effects that Knoll Light Factory does. That said, this one is probably the last one on my must-have list. It’s not cheap, at $149, so you’d have to balance the good parts with how much you’d actually use it.
1. Selection Secrets
When Photoshop CS5 came out in 2010, the natural question I heard from a bunch of people was “What’s your favorite feature in CS5?” I’ve always been into HDR photography and I think everyone thought I’d say HDR Pro (the new and improved HDR feature in CS5). But it wasn’t. I immediately found that the new features in the Refine Edge dialog were my favorite, because just about everything we do in Photoshop involves a selection at some point.
Today, I still stand by my favorite feature from over a year ago. Refine Edge, combined with the Quick Selection tool, is absolutely the best selection tool I’ve found in Photoshop, and most of the selections that we’ll do in this book use this.
A Compositor’s Best Friends
When making selections, the Quick Selection tool and the newly enhanced Refine Edge dialog are going to become your best friends. I’ve demonstrated them in my classes since Photoshop CS5 came out and when people see the results, you can actually hear the oohs and aahs in the crowd. One of my favorite parts about them is that they’re really easy to use. The Quick Selection tool is basically a brush, so if you can use a brush, you can use it. And, Refine Edge has only a few settings that we really need to worry about. Trust me, you’ll have them mastered in no time and be well on your way to killer selections.
STEP ONE:
Go ahead and open a photo with a person you’d like to extract from the background. In this example, I’m using a photo of a person who is fairly well-defined all around, but there is a little more detail in his hair. Don’t worry, though, I just want to get through some of the basics in this tutorial. We’ll get to the flyaway hair stuff later in the chapter.
STEP TWO:
Grab the Quick Selection tool from the Toolbox (or just press W) and start painting over the subject in the photo. The Quick Selection tool works just like a brush. It’s got Size and Hardness settings in the Brush Picker (up in the Options Bar), just like most brushes do. So, if you’re selecting larger areas, then using a larger brush is faster. You can press the Right Bracket (]) key to quickly make the brush larger and paint in those areas.
STEP THREE:
The main idea behind the Quick Selection tool is that it’s quick. At this point, just use a large brush and try to get as much of the subject selected as possible, even if you miss some smaller areas or over-select some other parts. And you don’t have to make the entire selection in one brush stroke. If you look at the left side of the Options Bar, you’ll see three little icons: a brush with a dotted oval, a brush with a dotted oval and + (plus sign), and a brush with a dotted oval and − (minus sign). The Quick Selection tool is automatically always in Add mode (the middle icon; and you’ll see a + in the