Lessons

Lesson Info

Compositing Steampunk Shoot Part 1

You know, I lost my hard drive with all might well the backgrounds that I had specifically set aside for this little trip and this workshop and so I'm going to scramble a little bit I wanted to try to find a background with two drop jessica in as she is with her spyglass and everything else so I was just really quickly flipping through here trying to pick others tons of really good images so let's look first at some background options here's one I took on the way up the coast um and I think that maybe I'm not sure I can do a full length of her in here. Maybe I get away with it it's probably not the best in terms of dropping someone you know standing in here but I might be able to get away with it but that's kind of a cool ocean, you know, feel and it's a long exposure I was kind of testing uh new pin tex six forty five z so that's an option? I also have a dock here. I've used this before so you guys probably seen it but I could have her standing here looking off into the water like she...

's waiting for a ship to come in so um apart from that, I've got a couple other ocean scenes but let's just see what image I could start with here that will give me what I want so in terms of full length that last series we did really worked out well so let's let this click on here like even that is really cool she's kind of looking off but not really that's a great one look how she's got that stands there that's really cool so um if I do a knockout it's gonna take me a little bit of time so I gotta be careful that I just don't grab any picture right because I'm gonna commit some time to it in terms of her um that's kind of cute to look at that can you guys see that? Is that big enough we can pull this down you don't you see all my meta data right? Uh really cute stuff so for me well I'm going back to those we'll try to work on one of the blowout ones too but let's start with the hardest one to think because it may take a while so um I kind of like her looking at me too right? She's kind of got that cocky looked like yeah um but let's go back to if I did a full length um here she looks like maybe she's a little a little nervous like something's happening and you know that's kind of a cool look oh my gosh um that's pretty confident look that's like oh, the winds blow me a little bit and so for full length I think I'm still drawn to this one what do you guys think? What you guys any any that's not bad there so that one that one uh in terms of knocking out when I say knock out cut out right that's pretty good so we're gonna commit to it let's do it command are opens it up and raw my rock inverter if I can open this little bigger here for you guys and I'm going to do my same old joel grimes look that I've done how many times ten thousand plus times right so I pulled the shadows till the right look at the coat all of a sudden the coat starts the pop highlights to the left a little bit I don't think we have a ton of blow out here but so I don't go too far on that contrast I'm gonna bring it down a little bit because we're gonna build it later maybe a little clarity here not too much but look at that coat looks pretty good right um in terms of anything else I think we're good to go to the next level so let's goto open image as a smart object because that's the smart way to do it it's still tied to raw and where did it go it's still going big file here we go so let's bring this over here and we are going to duplicate this image right click so it's a new smart object via copy we have done this many times now double click it we open it up we're going to convert it to a black and white and we're going to just the skin tones now if I get a chance to do the blowout look in a minute we're going to move the sliders especially orange to the right right to really blow erskine out so in this scenario I don't want to go and I don't think I want to do that because it's going to be outdoors right? Kind of a dark here a little bit moody your field so I'm gonna go I'm not gonna make her look to moody, but and probably in this scenario I'm not going to move that a whole lot I can take and try my yellows maybe bring her hair out a little bit um we gotta be careful too when we do our cut out that we're gonna be able to do that so let's say okay, we will take our blending modes to let's start let's just do soft light in this scenario I don't think anything else soft light gives me a little contrast still got some detail now if I do that move and I say oh, it lost a little bit of the coat I make a mask get a black brush go fifty fifty here. So, cliff, you know, by now I used masks for everything because now I can just pull back just a little bit of this coat. They still keep that effect on everything else, right? Because the coats black so it's not going to really I'm not going to really worry about, um, that treatment I just gave it, but I would say that's a pretty good look right there pulled out a little bit of detail that coat so I'm gonna flatten that commit and I have a shortcut I've made by taking and making it, you know, in, um what is that? You go over here to edit keyboard shortcut. I'm a moan for flatten now, let's let's just do a little bit of my ville via look so command j do a filter blur gazi and blur and we're going to only do about fifteen radius on this say ok, go to soft light and then once again we're gonna bring back the opacity so let's go to zero and maybe about twenty five on this again. I don't want to lose my coat so let's make another mask. Goto my black brush and let's get just make sure that detail that coat doesn't get lost in it on that process. But everything else we like so we flatten that for emerge down command e and now I'm gonna go command j which used me another duplicate layer we're going to go to filter other high pass with a radius of two and we do soft light because I know I don't want to go to far on this so let's take a look here and you could see that the coat really has that punch to it here let's go up here gives me a punch and I might be too much let's go about fifty percent okay so emerged down and I know I'm going fast here because we've done this what three times three days of doing this for the most part maybe at the high pass each day but we did it yesterday okay so let's do a little bit of uh frequency separation just to clean up everything so command j twice gives me two layers the bottom layer I'm gonna name low top layer I'm gonna name high and I'm going to go take the low layer and we're going to dust it scratches so we're gonna go to noise dustin scratches at a fifteen radius there it isthe bone I go to my high layer we're image image apply apply image and hopefully we got some know it didn't didn't say from last time so we go to the layer toe low is my selection there we want to go to subtract uh scale to offset one twenty eight everything else stays the same we say ok and set the bunning mode too linear light now that gives me an option well opportunity to do this really cool technique so we're gonna go and group it command g and we're going to just jump right in here so we're gonna go to the high layer which is looks like a high pass layer we take and choose healing brush tool not the spot healing brush tool but the healing brush tool so zoom in and I could see right away we've got a couple little spots here we're going to fix and again I think but let's make sure I am on uh normal um and where everything's good to go here so let's see I've got pick it up and we start to I would probably use a stamp to along that one because sometimes like really big spots don't get picked up by that and we still think we got everything right so sometimes I have a wrong setting so let's go in here and real quick just pick up a few little spots here and clean up every model needs work no such thing as perfect skin so not a whole lot of work that we need to do here so then I go over here to the bottom low the low layer goto my lasso tool and let's soften this little patch right here so I go up to filter blur gazi blur somewhere around a thirty radius something like that I think for most of what I've done is about thirty I go too far you can tell it's not working it's overdoing it so let's take a look d select dad I've fixed it a little bit so go again command f know that enhanced it sometimes it depends on where you picking it up that's smooth the doubt that worked a little bit and let's go down here we're gonna just gonna pick up as the legs is you get their darker and the lights it's sort of starts to get a little spotty so that fix that here we go that fix that okay looks pretty during good I think that's good enough for what we're doing it's not a beauty head shot right so we don't have to overdo it so I go and flatten the whole thing now I'm ready unless I want to do any liquefying at this point I want to do it I don't think we have any issues there looks pretty good so let's go with the knock out process quick selection tool let's start at the bottom and work our way to the top and again this is gonna be a little harder than most of what I do but it's not beyond the capability of a refined mask so in here we're gonna probably have to do a little work because this gets a little tough in here andi shrink my there we go and I'm gonna hit my alter option button and fill in the gray there we're gonna come along here and I'm gonna zoom in here in a second but let's just do a quick pass here zoom in we want to see everywhere that's got daylight or I say daylight the air coming through I'm gonna let my refined maske pick it up so let's go like this this is a tough one because she's got a lot of hair that sort of at that in between state um not sure if I can I can save you know if I can go in here to pay on the sky behind me so when I look and drop it in that's gonna be a lot of blue sky behind on that one that one image so that's going to make a little harder to dio now there's a section here that I'm there's no way I'm gonna fix that for this so I'm gonna probably fill that with hair later I'll clone a chunk and fill it in and then we come in here go there let photoshopped take care of that uh we missed a little chunk here but again we can fix that later if we have to so don't get too crazy on having to get every little thing perfect on the first pass here because as I showed you before all that is flexible ready? Come on, let's go down here a little bit of the need but so let's go back to my old I want to probably have to hand fix some of that all right? The boots you look pretty good all right good enough to go to refine edge so here we go refine edge and I'm going to take my wee fine edge brush which is defaults to we're gonna go right along the hair here and like I said, this is probably the hardest scenarios that I have to do is this kind of thing right here a little bit under there and I think that's about all I need to let me find out do there's really nothing else that has, like, frizz ease or something on it maybe right along here something like that okay, we're gonna make a new layer so our output is layer mask okay, now we're dropping our background so I know I automatically I'm gonna have to flip this or flip the background. I also know that my background here was shot with the pentax fifty one megapixel so it's going to be way too big so let's take and um let's just reduce it down I hate doing that, folks, but let's go to twenty six I think that might be we'd always come back and we'll drop her in and I know she's gonna be really light she's gonna look to to light that were gonna we're gonna hopefully fix that all right so here we go and she's you know what let's go back we got more room than I thought so let's go back to, uh here let's undo where's my history undo the image size and let's see what happens maybe I I realize that she's shot vertical so what happens? Oh, look at that course we're way down here so actually is good news that I shot with the pantex because now she's standing right I shot vertical here horizontal there so I got all my megapixels still left um so listen let's flip her right because she's not she's going the wrong way so we're gonna go with command tea which is free transform right? Click it flip horizontal okay and in fact she's a little big right? So what that tells me is I have an option I can reduce her so you hold the shift key down or raise my background. What I normally do is they raise the background because she's I mean thing right? I'm losing make it pixel by doing this but let's not get stuck on that right now let's just just get this thing going we only have a limited amount of time so let's say perspective wise I don't know if that's gonna be super accurate because in reality those waves might be a lot bigger than that right but I'm going to sell the fake right so whatever however I can sell the fake I'm good so she was shot with a little bit longer lens this is a wide angle background but that's the joy of doing this I'm now going to hopefully be able to do my magic and make it happen so I think she still might be a little big so let's go just a little smaller it's a little smaller here put her right about there let's see what happens with this right there and again I apologize is probably at the best choice of backgrounds but I think it's my work okay so she's really nice and warm right so our manically color balance is not the same right we're not gonna we're not going it's not gonna work but how do we solve that photo filter so I go over here to my photo filter option we're going to tag it to her so we're going to do a clipping path by holding down the old option and going between the two now my photo filter I could go to a cooling filter and let's just leave it about right there so that was about nineteen percent on that blue I'm not locked into that so as I start plane we're going to see if um she matches actually looks pretty cool so far all right yes, but the background plate this from shelling the layers. Did you oh, it's you from the original. What? You added in very good question. Very good. Okay, so this is a shot that was done at maybe for an afternoon, right? So it's not night time. And when I went to the hotel and I brought this and was looking at us like man kind of boring, so I immediately added some filters, so I built a contrast there, um brought down the top. Maybe I grey dated a little bit too much, so we might look at that and maybe pull that off, but there that that strip was a little hot for me, so I took care of that, but here's, my photo filters let's look at the difference. So I added my night filter, which is really just a cooling filter, but I really cranked it over and I actually did it twice, but one I did with the soft light. So what happens when you take that off? Both off that's what it looks like folks pretty darn boring. So who says we're not in the greatest age of photography? Now you may say you're a cheater, I am I admit it, I do what I want because I'm an artist, I get away with it I'm not a photo journalist that has to you know go by the book there is no book I'm an artist so let's go back to this but that that uh lips cooling filter on her a little bit um let's do what I always do and that has put a, um atmosphere between her in the background shift command and blank layer we go to my brush white brush thirtyish thirtyish thirty percent flow thirty percent capacity we make sure it's really soft it does make it big and we're gonna do a little bit of a poop and see what happens here come on again I don't want to go too much on this one but look at the difference between um so let's turn it off turn on turn off, turn on um and you can see this a lot lighter on my screen here too. So, um but that gives me a little separation between her and let's add some noise to it remember we did that before filter noise add noise and it probably default twelve and I say that's probably perfect so you can see I can almost do this in my sleep now we got a couple lines in here so let's fix those we're gonna go to the mask itself and we're gonna go to black hundred percent and let's go down to smaller brush here and let's fix that line that's from the mask itself so there's probably one over here just clean that up and there's probably one back here they always came to show up later okay, so that fix that okay um let's work on her uh zoom in and see how bad of a mask we did first of all I can see we've got some grey on her stomach so let's get our black brush with a seventy five percent hardness somewhere around there and we want to make sure that was goto window that on my brush presets it's not a tapered brush but a solid brush right remember because I've had that where I made the tape of brush and left it there when I go back to do it and I have problems but now we just changed that hardness so let's go back and make sure it's seventy five percent or thereabouts and we're gonna resume down here zoom in now watch what happens like magic go to the brush the sorry the mask itself let's see, we wanna be on black gay and I'm gonna hold the shift key down and I'm just gonna go ups right in here and we're just gonna clean that up clean up anything else there's a little line there clean that up someone walk around my my uh they cut out a little chunk missing there so we get the key and I'm gonna bring back her highlight on her arm actually, it starts right about there we'll go outside of it a little bit hit the ex key comeback so easy that is okay, so let's bring that highlight right along there back we're missing a chunk of it here so let's see, where does it all come out here? There it is and there's a rim on there I want to say that room that's gonna be a cool looking um well, that's interesting. What am I doing here in that interesting? That isn't it's changing. You see the color change here? Photo shop sometimes throws you for a loop. I know how many hours you spend at it, but sometimes you start clicking at something you're thinking what is going on? It's like the filter is being activated on my cut out here. I have no idea what that's all about lips. All right, so we're gonna walk around you guys bored yet? Okay, sorry. This is a really kind of a bummer. Part of okay, I make sure fingers are all in, right? So now I switch and it doesn't have to be perfect. All you gotta do is sell the fake we're gonna take this little chunk out here we go past a little bit and then hit the ex key and come back in see how fastest is compared to the old days of doing channels and what's that what they call that where they go along and, uh you uh you know what it's called but you hand cut it out through the through the uh I don't know what's called anymore it's been so long since I've done it. Okay, so we're fixing that we'll fix that in a minute. We're gonna work on a hair in a minute so let's go down here looking pretty good looking pretty good looking pretty good let's go down to the shoes let's see what's up in here and everything good little tv spot right there. Come on. So you go past it hit x come back in. Okay, we got a little chunk of gray here and I'm colorblind so sometimes. And mr gray, I know that's hard to believe, but sometimes I just don't see certain certain colors. Okay, so see, I don't. That is there, but let's just let's just clean that little spot up there, but we got that little white line around that how am I gonna fix that model technique? We do that a minute well, globally be able to fix that and we'll just take along here in the wrong button and clean up that one spot there, okay, so I think that's pretty good so now let's do that right on here there's a little bit of a grey here so if you miss that someone's gonna pick it up but and then I go hit my ex come back in here fixed that flips cliff getting this because you've got thousands of these to do before you and then this little jagged line along here this looks kind of bad right so let me run it straight up here up I'm hitting the wrong button every time I hit my shifty and he's gonna clean up sorry I hit my crop tool clean up this on the knee cap let's just by default let's take a little bit of that out there and then we're gonna go in here so here's how we do it I come up into the scene that my ex key and then come back that's how I get my little corners all right I think we're ready clips I think we're ready for the global shrinking so we go underneath the hair so I take my my uh uh lasso tool we'll go just below her hair come all the way around and we've got some hair underneath there so let's just cut across like that for now we do the a filter blur gazi blur to pixels then let's zoom in here so everybody can see it am attuned in before you go watch the who are here let's go down the boots watch how I hit command l which is my levels and we shrink the mask think all that little white line that was around there is gone oh, you know, that looks weird over here. What did I do? You see that little section there were just lost. That wasn't what I just did though that was from before something happened right here. We want to bring that back. See? Right here. That's not good. I can't sell the fake doing that. Come on, black. There we go. So let's, just fix that real quick and I don't have to fall that exactly because nobody really knows what I could just cut that off like that. All right, looks pretty good. Let's look at the hit let's. Look at the hair running through um, and we're outlining. Does it matter how close it doesn't really matter? Because no, I don't think so. That's a good question. I don't think so. I've never really had a problem with that, but maybe you want to get as close as you can. Someone maybe could solve that. That question for you you could practice yourself, but maybe you just take something and do a test, go way out, do it, go in close, do it and see if there's a difference but that's a good question so let's get her hair to look like it's supposed to look so the first thing I want to do is I want to be on her not the mask right? And I want to go over here too my opacity about fifty percent flo about fifty somewhere around there were going to pick up the color of a dark color probably of her hair so maybe like in here and now o sethi um blending motive my brush at um when I say overlay and we start painting in here to bring out the detail in the hair you gotta be careful here because and we got a really hard brush shouldn't have a hard brush that's kind of ah bummer I should have had that said but we want to just pick up some of the hair and if I go too far I can show you a little trick to because I want to just bring it up I want to get all that fogging out of there if I go too far I can I can burn it down later like right in here they've got a little too far so now I can go back to my dodge or dodger burn let's go about ten somewhere around there and I can bring it back a little bit too you know? And that kind of started building some really saturation so I gotta be careful in that but so I could go back here try to clean up that a little bit now maybe I gotta go mohr on this there we go that's coming back a little bit uh now I'm probably really botching it up the point is is I'm trying to get a little bit of that detailed take the fogging out of the the hair where I made the mask and and I would say probably should have done in this memory did this day one you put a black card we should have maybe done that are white on her a white card but keep in mind too that I do this a lot I'll take get my stamp tool and then I fill in little sections so like I might grab a section here so let's make sure I have a good stamp and then I might um we'll have the kind of flip it here but I might take and fix a little section here if that doesn't work I do this a lot I'll actually grab a section comand see command v command tea take it up spin it and you know what? I was on a blank layer if you're on a blank layer does nothing so I grabbed a good section here command vehicle our command see command vehicle mentee now have it still didn't do it why is it jumping up to this one every time I see that I'm here oh, why? Why? Because it's created some layer, uh, joel tried again, but for some reason it's not picking it up. So let's, go in here. Um, see, did I tell you I'm not a retouching genius that should pick it up? You know why? Because it's going outside my mask, so it's clipped. There it is, see the clipping path. You know, I did that because I'm putting in between are ready, clip path, that there is my challenge, so I gotta go above. I gotta put this above here. That's, this is this is why I photoshopped so difficult. Um, it was now you you should be able to see it now. Well, it's in there, it still clipped. Get rid of it. There went well, let's. Move on.