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Logic Checklist

This is my logic checklist. This is everything that we need to know about image compositing that I think is really, really important. So we've got angle. We've got lens and exposure and all of these different things that you will need to think about when you're doing any kind of composite. So we're gonna talk about each one individually, but let's talk about them in relation to this picture very quickly. We have a before and after image here, and this is just me shooting against a blank wall. I don't particularly contrast with this wall, but just something that we're gonna talk about later sort of ah, downside to the way that I shoot sometimes again, that laziness thing like I talked about. But what I'm paying attention to here is what is my background and what does this image look like of my before picture? I have to make sure that that angle matches. So we're gonna talk about what angle means specifically angle of the camera, how it's looking at the subject lens. Is the lens consiste...

nt? So let's say that I had used a 14 millimeter lens on that background and the edges were kind of distorted and stuff. Well, then, would it make sense that the books here and and me and my feet and everything we're not distorted? That wouldn't make sense. So thinking about Len's choice is important, and I don't think that's so important where, like, you know, maybe you're using a 55 millimeter and a 50 on another scene. That's fine. But if you're talking about a drastic change, exposure obvious. Just what is your light like? Although exposures more about the plus or minus help, right, how dark is it? And then we have white, which is more like, Where's it coming from? Background. What is your background? Are you taking your background into account? Is it going to stay there in the end? Focus. This is a really big one for moving people to a different background. Where is the focal point in the background? And you have to make sure that your person fits in that focal point, which is something that I've tried to fudge before, and it doesn't work so and then height, which is how high your camera is not so much the angle or tilt of it, but how high it is do you need a tripod and one of the colors like, let's talk about this very specifically. Now angle is how much your cameras tilted up or down. It's just the basic, like, this is my camera. And is it looking at the person like this is looking down at the person. How is that gonna work? But then you also have to think about a couple of other things like, Are you going to keep that consistent? And how were you going to keep that consistent? So let's see, there are people who will go to extremes to do this by measuring angles and stuff like that. I don't do that. I just try to remember. Was it tilted up or was it not? Wasn't tilted down or was it not? And then that is paired very easily with the height of your tripod. So not just am I looking up? But am I looking up from below? Am I looking up from here because I'm shooting something a little bit higher up, Um, I looking straight down on the subject of my looking over here, down at the subject, So those are things that we have to take into consideration for each one. Okay, lens. So your lens choice should remain consistent, or at least pretty close to consistent as we talked about, we're gonna have distortion problems, if not and having distortion problems is the worst thing. Okay, it's not the worst thing. It's flexible in photo shop, but nobody wants to do that. I mean, just keep it consistent. So perspective, distortion. That's when an image either widens because of the distortion around the edges. It'll sort of stretch it or its when it flattens the image. So okay, let's say so. Basically, everyone's has distortion. Doesn't matter what it is. It's doing something to your picture. I guess there are some lenses that are very close to how we see, but let's say you have an 85 millimeter lens that's gonna flatten your background in a way that a 24 isn't in. A 24 is going to stretch the edges in a way that in 85 isn't so. If you've got a picture of a background where it's really compressed and then a picture of somebody taken with a wide angle lens, they might not naturally go together, and it might not even be the kind of thing that you're thinking. Oh, well, that's obviously lends problem. It just may be something in the back of your mind where you're saying thes two things just don't fit together. Why is it? And it's very often because of the perspective distortion that you get from a lens. So a tighter lenses going to produce less distortion in terms of edges. And that's where I'm really concerned. In compositing, I tend not to composite with anything below a 28 millimeter because then I have problems with Where is the distortion happening? Am I keeping everything in the center of my frame? Or is the thing that I'm compositing on the edge? So maybe I've taken a picture with a 40 millimeter lens and there's a bird up in the corner, and the bird's wing is like Bush, like real big because it's being distorted. I can't really use that anymore. So then I'd have to make sure that everything is in the center, so I tend not to use very wide angles when I'm shooting stock images and things like that exposure. And this is a pretty simple concept, at least for compositing because that's just basically make sure the exposures relatively the same. Make sure that it's it's bright enough on my only problem here is that if something's too dark, if maybe shot something and really low light and it was just a drastic situation and you try to pull that up, pull those levels up. Then you might have some green happening, some noise in your image, whereas the rest of the picture might not have that grain or noise. So when you come into that problem, then your your option is you either soften the thing that has too much noise. Thus sort of not blurring it. But making it too soft for the rest of the picture. Sort of creating, Ah, illustrative. Look to it or you add noise to the rest of the picture, which is something people are very not keen to do most of the time, so but it can be fixed during editing most of the time. Even if it's pretty under exposed, it can still be fixed, and that's why I'm not gonna pay as much attention to exposure. Same with color. I'm not gonna worry too much, like if this has more of a red hue and this has more of a blue hue. That's OK. We'll fix it later. But for the most part will just keep an eye on it. Focus. So this is referring to where your camera is focused in the scene. So if I'm about to take a picture of this scene right here and let's say, um OK, so this is gonna be my background. I love this scene. It's the prettiest thing I want to put a person in here somewhere. Maybe I'm just undecided yet. I don't really know where I want them yet. OK, so what would I do then? In that case, I would take many pictures of the scene with many different focal points going back through the image. That way I have the option of putting them somewhere. Something I was just shooting yesterday. Um, it's cold here in Seattle. Would you guys say, like on the water yesterday it was very cold and I was shooting, um, the water and it was kind of choppy and and it was really, really stressful. And I was trying to get my focal point where I wanted it, like the water is moving and it won't focus where I needed to focus. So I put my manual focus on and I just moved it slightly and took a picture, moved it slightly, took a picture. And I got all these different focal points so that I can composite somebody into that picture. And that saved me a lot of time in the end, because I was not having a good time trying to auto focus in that water. My feet were about to fall off my legs, so I tried to fix that. Okay, and this is just what I just said is just you have to drop somebody into the focal point of the image or you have to blur that person. Usually we don't want a blur a person. I mean, that's a really unfortunate thing to have to dio. So instead of blurring a person, we try to find that focal point. The worst thing is when you find a picture that you took in 2011 you're like Best backdrop and your persons like that big in the picture because they have to be way in the background where you focused by accident. I do this all the time. I find these images and I'm like, Oh, it's perfect and I can't see my subject anymore. So keeping the focus locked because something we're going to talk about more a little bit later, and this comes into play in a lot of different ways. Sometimes I'll say keep your focus locked for the whole time you're shooting and sometimes I won't. Sometimes it's a relevant. Sometimes you can keep moving your focal point, depending on what we're shooting. But let's say, for example, with this image we have all these flowers and I was shooting on a tripod. I had my remote, and that's how I was doing this image. Now, if I moved my focal point during this shooting process and I started focusing just on the flowers and things like that, then every single thing in this picture would be in focus when, in a normal picture, not everything is in focus. You have something out of focus in the foreground, maybe in the background, whatever it may be. So that's not gonna make sense in the end, especially when you're compositing things into a blank background. So I have the image that we just saw that foggy field where I composited myself in there. If we have an image like that and there is one focal point because it's not likely that every single thing on that field was in focus. Unless I tell you shoot, I don't though I'm usually shooting around F 2.8 toe about 56 or so. Because of that, not everything is going to be in focus. So if I take a picture of a book over here in a book over there and a bird over here and everything's in focus, I try to drop them into the scene. Then, all of a sudden, this really sharp book is going to be sitting on really blurry grass, and that's not gonna work. So you can either change your focal point in camera, get everything and focus and then blurt and photo shop. Or you can shoot it as you think you need to. It's gonna talk about the pros and cons of doing each one background simple question of Is your background going to stay the same or is it not? So are you going to change the background or you're not gonna change the background and do you need to shoot for that? So is shooting. A contrast ING background is, I think, the most important thing that one can do for moving somebody to a new background. It allows the hair to stand out, which means that we can cut that out a lot easier. I don't worry as much about cutting along skin and stuff like that, depending on the lighting situation, because that's something that we can layer mask if you want to be a little bit patient with it. But hair as we all know, you can't just let your mass care. I mean, you can't just start erasing around little strands of hair unless you want to spend a 1,000, years, and that's gonna be your life's work. But generally that's not true. So we don't do that. And so choose your backdrop wisely. When you are moving a subject, this goes into the focus, issue it no. Does that background have the right focal point? This goes into different things, like angle and height and how you shot that background, and then how much work are you willing to do to make it work? So I just shot image where I had a field and it wasn't quite the right height. I shot it up here when really, I needed to shoot it down here. But I really like the scene. I thought it was perfect for the image that I was working on. So I went into photo shop and I distorted the perspective of it to make it look like the ground was up. A little higher Senate match with my subjects feet. I'll cheat it like that. Sometimes I try not Teoh. I mean, normally I would just get up and go shoot another scene, but I didn't have that option at the time. So I went ahead and I shot it like that, talking about light. These are the questions that we need to ask. What is the quality of light? Is a diffused light or is it harsh light or is it some combination of both? And for me, it's almost always diffused. I shoot in overcast lighting. That's just how I like to shoot. I shoot with windows, makes things really, really easy. But for those of you who insists on making my life difficult, we're gonna talk about harsh lighting. Dio So I have been experimenting a little bit with harsh lighting. I've been taking some lights out and just continuous lights that those flashes I mean, I don't know how people handle that. I cannot get it to work at all. So I've been using continuous lights, and when we talk later today about lighting, I'm going to be using rial lights, but not on the flash on the modeling light. But I'm also gonna be using lamps and just, you know, things that you would find in your house to light a subject. And that's how I feel comfortable. Personally, I like just taking a light bulb and shining at somebody and seeing how that goes. So we're gonna be talking about that. But it's really important to keep in mind for compositing. And then where is the light source? So where's it coming from? What is the direction of White and does that match? Because when that doesn't match in your image, you're gonna have a huge problem. And if it's harsh light and it doesn't match, I don't know how to fix that. I mean, aside from flipping things and trying to rotate things and stuff like that and this is actually a perfect example of why I don't have people jumped to do levitation pictures. People say to me all the time, Well, can't you just have your person jump in the air and then rotate them? But you can't because the lights coming from a certain direction and you need that light to be consistent, so very important to think about. And then what color is the light? Are you shooting this at sunset? Are you shooting this that dawn? Are you shooting this in the middle of the day or in your home? And how are you going to change that light now? I have a pretty easy time changing light, and I'm sorry, Color and Photoshopped. So because of that, I am able to sort of not mine to the time of day as much. Maybe I shoot in the morning. It's really blue. Maybe I shoot in my house. It's more yellow that could be fixed. What I worry about is if you have the sun hitting somebody space, and that's really, really orange. But then you're trying to put them in a scene where it's like daybreak and it's a blue field. Well, that's not gonna make any sense at all. So paying attention to the color of light can be really important. Height refers to how tall your camera is. Is it on the ground is away appear that matters enormously like probably more than anything else. In my opinion, when it comes to moving somebody to a new background, if you don't have the height right than there are things you can do in photo shop, you can go in and change perspective and things like that. But, man, it's a pain in the butt and we don't want to do that. We just want to get it right, or at least very close, taking measurements. I'm not gonna lie to you. I don't do that. But I really wanted to lie to you and say that I did, but I don't. But it's a really, really good idea, especially if you need to do something really precise. It's something that I started I'm going to start doing. I just got a little tape measure that I'm putting in my camera bag because I've had a headache too many times with this. I don't have a memory, and I don't shoot by my hands. So because I have my camera on a tripod, I don't just go up and take pictures at this height all the time. You know my pictures on all five feet tall, but my tripod changes. I tend to shoot kind of low. Sometimes it's up here. Sometimes it's up there, and because it's on a tripod, it's easy to measure. So I'm going to start taking a tape measure around to measure these things, and I'm going to start taking Mawr images. So remember how I was telling him, Say, this is our scene and I'm going to shoot it at different angles and different focal points. I'm also going to shoot it at different heights, so we'll start here. I'll change my focal point to go back. Maybe take six pictures like that and they will get down here and then do the same and then get down here and do the same. And then when you have a stock folder of images, you're not gonna have a problem. You're going to be able to put anybody in that backdrop no matter how they were photographed. And that's my goal is to be more organized about that to measure it, to really understand how to shoot that background. So if you ignore the height of your camera, here's what's going to happen. You're going to have a floating person even though you did not intend of a floating person. So let's say Okay, I shot the scene. I shot it from Oh, golly, I don't know right here. Then I go take a photo of my subject and I'm down here and I'm shooting my subject. And then I try to put them on that background, and then they're gonna be like this. Floating their feet just won't connect with the ground, no matter where you move them or how hard to try thought it kind of hurts. So instead of doing that, then you just need to know the height, and you need to do that consistently so that we don't have a floating person or somebody in the ground or something weird happening, So that would be bad. So trying to get that right very important using a tripod, do you need a tripod or do not need a tripod? Because who here uses a tripod regularly? Half of you that is more than I anticipated, but I know that a lot of people don't. This is what I get all the time. I say to somebody use a tripod. Okay, so I'm the try, but this is my camera cameras on the tripods. And then all of a sudden, I'll see that person come over and pick the whole tripod up and then just start shooting with the whole tripod attached. That's not good either. So but do you need a tripod? I mean, is it important? And the fact is that, if not always important I mean, you don't have to exactly measure to the inch exactly where your camera is necessarily. But it really helps in terms of like, just measuring the, um the legs, you know, like how many rungs you pull the tripod up and things like that and and just knowing while I usually shoot with two rungs pulled out and then you know that that's sort of your go to angle, and then you can sort of do consistently, so that's good. Using a tripod is going to allow you to take a plate shot, but I just call it a blank shot because I don't I don't have time for this technical stuff. So a blank shot is just when you move your subject out and you just take a picture of the blank scene. This is a great thing to Dio in any circumstance. I don't care where you are. I don't care what kind of thing you're shooting. Let's say that you just did a session with a bride and groom their standing in a certain spot and you're kind of shooting from that angle. You know, when you get those shots, maybe you then want to move to a different angle. It can be an amazing thing to do if you think you have something distracting in the background that just ask them to move over for a second and take a shop there because if you don't well, then you might not have an easy time of compositing someone out of that background. But if you dio, all you're going to do is ask them to move a little bit, get them in a new pose and then change your angle a little bit, so that's a really great thing to do, and I really recommend it, and I forget sometimes, and it's been OK, but only because I have so many stock images of backgrounds that I could potentially use. So this is sort of dependent on if you need that blank shot and it's really great because then your cameras stuck there so you won't have the tendency to walk up here and then go back here and then you'll scroll through and be like, Oh, that was the perfect picture. But oh my gosh, I moved and I don't know where Iwas and it's hard to guess exactly where you were so always good for that color. Now the color is changing in your image. Like I said, that's kind of OK. It's OK because if the whole entire image has a certain color temperature, we can fix that. What's not okay is if the light that's being reflected is a very specific color, and it's hitting something in a specific way. So let's say the you have a gold reflector. Do you guys use the gold side of the reflector? Me neither. I don't get it, but some people do. So, um so if you're using the gold side of the reflector and you're hitting that on the side of somebody's face, and they're gonna have gold right here. And that might not fit any scene that you want to put them in. So be aware of how the whites being reflected in the shot so color temperature shifts are OK. But the other thing that one talk about with color is not just Are you adding a certain color light? But be aware of how people and things reflect light and what color that is. So if I take a picture of this scene with that backdrop, it's white. Then that backdrop is going to look more blue. But when I add my body in there, I am just a reflecting yellow everywhere. So it's going toe, have an overall color temperature that's a bit shifted. So if you're not used to compositing or you haven't had a lot of experience with moving people in and out of shots, you're going to notice the color shift. It might be very slightly you're gonna notice it. And so when that happens, that is okay. That is what we can easily change from one shot to another. So these are just some shots where compositing with somewhat used, but I want to show how much of an overhaul weaken due to certain images that may be more mainstream. Maybe wedding shots. Uh, let's see. Engagement photos, stuff like that, how important it can be to shoot for the composite And what happens when you don't. Now, in this case, I didn't have the option of shooting for the composite. I was shooting my friend's wedding unofficially, just snapping in a courthouse and in a courthouse. You can't say Okay, now I'm gonna set up my tripod and I want you guys to all take down those signs in the background so I can get a blank shot and it'll look beautiful. That's not gonna happen. So I had to go in and clone that, and I had to really, really work on that. I also had to find other blank walls that I photographed that day to add in later so I could add a piece of blank wall into the background so that at least I wouldn't have to clone every little inch of everything. But I did have a blank wall that I photographed for that. That spot the great thing about that was that I was able to keep my height. So I was shooting, you know, just hand held at my height. And then I just walked over to another part of the wall where I could shoot that wallet, that same height where it was really, really neutral in that area. So that's how I ended up compositing that in. And I just tried to get rid of everything that was too distracting. I really regret this definitely should have gotten rid of that's driving me nuts right now, but I didn't think of it, so that's okay. And then things like this is This is what I'm talking about. When I say the the lighting effect, I'm not so much here worried about compositing. I didn't add anything into the shot. I didn't really do anything. But I did change where we see the light so that now she can look at her wedding photos and think, Wow, it looks like I was outside instead of it looks like I was in a courthouse, which was really not an attractive courthouse, I don't know, but it was a good challenge, you know, it's fun to do stuff like that so then we have more extreme compositing Where in this case I was photographing my cousin and her fiance, and we were in the woods, were kind of like in her backyard, just taking some photos. And, um and so we ended up with the shots that were good. I mean, they're fine, like I don't I don't shoot like this. So I don't know one way or the other, if they're good or not, you know, they were They were happy enough with them and they're in focus. That's the important thing, right? I mean, that's how I judge success with these types of things. So we're in the forest, and, um and then I started thinking, Well, I wish that we had more drama. And so, almost as a joke, I did this like I said to during I'm like, Look, you have a rainbow coming out of your head and I thought it was kind of funny, but then she was like, Oh, no, that's actually kind of cool. So eso I love being able to shoot images where I can see separation from the background in some way. So in this image you can see that there's some light, kind of like around the hair and around his head, and that created enough separation from the background to be able to cut them out onto a new backdrop. So that was great for me because I could then move them. And then the only other thing was, How do I blend a sky? How do I get rid of that background? And what I ended up doing was painting white almost the whole way around them, not touching them, because I didn't want to cut into her hair or anything. Um, and then I dropped that sky in the background. It's not a labor intensive process. If you know exactly which buttons are. You go to buttons and you know, they generally do things the same every time. So I went ahead and did that. And then we have really, really simple images like this where I took a picture of my cousin and I was This was now her wedding, and so I took a picture of of of her behind the silk cloth, and then I thought, Wow, those people over there distracting and this person's heels. I really don't like that and so I didn't like it. And so I just colored over it. I mean, I took a brush, I chose yellow, and I just painted. And then I thought, that look nicer. So sometimes it's not about, you know, like cloning these people out, which was my initial reaction. I said, Oh, I got to get rid of those people. And I don't have a shot of the grass from that angle. And what am I gonna do? And then I thought, Oh, the brush tools. Good. So that's what I did.