Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [80]
STEP 13:
Hide the group with the boy with the water gun for a minute and create a new blank layer under the picture frame. Get the Brush tool and, with your Foreground color set to black and your brush Opacity set to 40%, use a small, soft-edged black brush to paint some shadows on the tree under the frame. Don’t forget that, since the tree is curved, the shadows will curve slightly downward to follow the shape of the tree. Lower the layer opacity a bit.
STEP 14:
Every family needs a dog, right? Open the dog photo next and select him from the background. Move him into the composite and use Free Transform to scale his size down quite a bit. He’s going to be way off in the background, so he shouldn’t be that big. Select the Blur tool from the Toolbox and, in the Options Bar, set the Strength to 25%, then just paint around the edges of the dog, so they’re not quite as crisp. Add a new layer under the dog layer and use the same brush from the previous step to paint a shadow under the dog, then create a group for your dog layers, and unhide the group with the boy and water gun.
©FOTOLIA/DOGIST
STEP 15:
Repeat Step 14 (except for the Blur tool) for the pet chipmunk, and place him on the couch near the woman. Be sure to place this new layer group above the Couch group in the layer stack. Again, I know it’s quirky, but we’re going for that quirk factor here to mix the concept of a living room, a family, and the outdoors.
©FOTOLIA/JAREN WICKLUND
STEP 16:
Now, open the photo of the butterflies, select them from the white background, and add a few around the image. My personal favorite is the one on the man’s shoulder. It just seems to fit perfectly with the bored/exasperated look on his face. A quick trick to add some visual interest and take away the cookie-cutter feel extra images like this have is to change their color. Press Command-U to open the Hue/Saturation dialog and move the Hue slider to get a different color for one or two of the butterflies.
©FOTOLIA/SVETLANA LARINA
STEP 17:
Let’s start finishing this one up with some dodging, burning, and overall shadowing. First, click on the topmost layer and press Command-Option-Shift-E (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E) to merge everything together into one new layer. Now, as with most composites, you might have to walk away and come back to it. Then, take a look around and look at details that just don’t seem to fit. For example, look at the lighting pattern on all of the people. The two boys have a fairly hard light source coming from the right. You can see it on their clothes and hair.
STEP 18:
The woman isn’t facing toward the light source, but we can see she’s got some bright areas on her right, which fit in well with the photo. However, the lighting on the man’s face on the right isn’t as bright as the others. So, select the Dodge tool (O) from the Toolbox, and in the Options Bar, set the Range to Highlights, since that’s primarily what we want to enhance, set the Exposure to 10%, and turn off the Protect Tones checkbox, since it tends to make the skin a peachy color and oversaturated. Now, paint on the right side of the man’s face and hair with a small, soft-edged brush. Do the same on the right side of the woman on her hair, shoulder, and back of her arm.
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Tip: Protecting the Background
You can Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on the Couple on Couch layer’s thumbnail in the Layers panel to put a selection around them. That way, when you do your dodging and burning on the topmost layer, it won’t bleed onto the background.
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STEP 19:
Switch to the Burn tool (Shift-O), set the Range to Midtones, and the Exposure to 10%. Then use a soft-edged brush to darken any areas that should have more