Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [79]
STEP FOUR:
Repeat Step Three and add some grass around the man’s foot, near the bottom-left side of the couch. You’ll notice that I’m naming layers here as I go along, because by not doing so, it could start getting really confusing. Also, it’s a good idea to group all of these layers into a Couch group, so they’re easier to find later.
STEP FIVE:
Create another new blank layer above the cloned grass layers we just created in Steps Three and Four. Then, get the Brush tool (B), set your Foreground color to black, your brush Opacity to 25%, and using a small, soft-edged brush, paint some hard shadows right under the legs of the couch and the man’s foot.
STEP SIX:
Now, open the photo we’ll use for the boy in the tree. You can see we had some fun shooting this one. I wanted it to be authentic, so we held him upside down. I knew he was going to be hanging in a tree and that his knees and lower legs could be covered, so we didn’t worry about covering up his legs. Select him from the background and place him into the composite. Don’t worry about the hands on his legs either—just select up to the knee. Use Free Transform to resize and position him up in the tree. Oh yeah, just so you know, I almost always use a layer mask when I create my selections in the Refine Edge dialog. However, in nearly every selection in this chapter, I had to pull the image off of the layer with the mask and use the Defringe feature to get rid of that tiny fringe that we always see. Check out Chapter 1 if you need a refresher on how to do this.
STEP SEVEN:
Create a new blank layer above the boy and use the same trick with the Clone Stamp tool we used in Step Three to put some tree leaves and branches over his legs, so only a small part of them is showing. Option-click to sample the tree near his legs, then paint over part of the legs (leaving just a small area showing), so you can’t see that we were really holding him up in the air. You can see in the last step, I created another layer group to hold the layers for this part of the image.
STEP EIGHT:
Next, open the photo of the boy with the water gun. Again, I knew before the photo shoot that he was going to be behind the tree. So, I photographed him behind a large board that we had in the studio, so I could make it as authentic as possible by showing him peeking around something. It also worked out, because the board cast a nice shadow on his leg that the tree would normally be casting if he were really behind it. Select him from the background, move him into the composite, and use Free Transform to make him smaller.
STEP NINE:
Repeat Steps Three and Five and use the Clone Stamp and Brush tool techniques we used there to add some grass and shadows around the boy’s feet. Then, select these layers in the Layers panel and press Command-G to group them together.
STEP 10:
What’s a water gun without water, right? So, open the photo of the boy with the hose. Go to Select>Color Range and choose Highlights from the Select pop-up menu to just select the bright parts (mostly the water) of the photo, and then click OK. Press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to put the selected area onto its own layer. Then, hide the Background layer and use the Eraser tool (E) to erase away any excess area that was selected, so you only have the water splash left.
©FOTOLIA/STUART MONK
STEP 11:
Switch to the Move tool, and drag the photo of the water into the composite. Then, use Free Transform to reduce the size, Right-click inside the transform bounding box, and choose Flip Horizontal, then fit it into place. Press Return (PC: Enter) to lock in the changes. Now, it’s still got a little green in it from the original background. But, since most of the water goes over a blue sky, all we need to do is change the color. So, press Command-U (PC: Ctrl-U) to open the Hue/Saturation dialog and change the Saturation, Hue, and Lightness settings to help the water fit better with the background.
STEP 12:
Next, open the photo of