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Lesson Info

Starting the Composite: Organizing Your Images

with this process. I really like beginning Enbridge Azi Noticed I'm shooting in capture one, but in general, I do a bridge Photoshopped workflow on dial Do light room a little bit. For most part, it's I'd like to shoot and immediately just go into, you know, photo shop because it's compositing. So I'll do the camera Adobe raw editor, But I'll do that straight from bridge. So are we seeing what? Okay, good. It's life here. Okay, Um, so I'm gonna open up bridge. Here we go. It's excited and happy. So with this and it goes right to the folder that I have here for this, which is great. So, bridge Aziz, you You may know, um, And for those that don't bridge is a fantastic tool for sorting rating. Finding all these different things with your your images on your drive, it's more like it. You think of chrome or Firefox is a browser for the Internet. Bridge is a great browser for images on your computer, so I use it. But it could do so much more to you. Confined your metadata. You can rate thing...

s you can dio nondestructive adobe camera raw edits. So it's It's really great. Fantastic tool for just and also previewing side by side comparisons checking the focus. So I'm gonna be using Adobe Bridge for the section, since it's so straightforward and really just prepped for this. So with that, um, let's just go through some of these three shots, you can tell. I did. Ah, some some ratings here in general, but in just looking at Let's start with a the bagel. Now we want to start with a dog. So let's see, I'm going through. If you want these to be a little bit larger, you can change your your thumbnail size so you can see that. But it also, you know, you only have so much real estates. You have to think of what you actually want to be on their, um, let's see so that this was the one you can check your your focus again. These these images are large thes images are so large that it takes a while for them to update. That's the perfect face. If a child is just running into you, So it's great. Um, let's see. So we have ah couple here that could work for the mom love the streets so excited, like I'm in this. So in general, my process eyes, the way I go about it is I look at everything and start giving a, you know, 3 to 5 star rating. And you can do that by selecting the image that you like. Let's say I really like that one and you'll notice I shot in both raw and JPEG, Um, kind of a digital quarter. I like to make sure I have backups of everything. So especially if it's a client. You know, I want to make sure I have a least J peg backups. But really, all I need is the raw, especially with this. So if you are tired of going back and forth and it's a Communist steak to sometimes rate the J peg rather than the raw and so at times you'll have to go, I did the wrong one. What's nice about Bridge is you have over here on the left, uh, camera filters, right? You can say, Just show me the raw images and nothing else. So I click this, you'll notice it went from well, the J pegs in the Ross. Right. So this is the Sunni raw drw they spell like ideo on, then the JPEG JPEG ones next to it. If I click on camera image bam, only the camera really helpful when you're making sure that you want to just rate the correct ones, and that way you're going into the camera and the sliders there. So with this in general, let's say I really liked that one. That was just that was the one. Let's say I can zoom in on the face and check the focus. I could do command thin the numbers or control from PC the numbers one through five. So if I give this a one star terrible, awful look at that hair strand, it's way off. You can You can change it through there, so I'm gonna do command four for this one. Um, let's say I really like that one. I can change it. A command five. Then, if you want to get rid of any stars, let's say change my mind with this one. Command zero, and we'll just sort of wipe it clean. Why, that's helpful. It's not just sort of a visual indicator, but it's really helpful when you just say, Hey, show me only the four stars were better. You can go to this little star guy here. Can you mean yes. Here we go. Uh, if you click on that, that little star you can say, show me only the three or better one or better or just the five stars. So it's a really helpful tool in making your workflow very efficient, Right? Making sure you've selected the right ones. You're not going back and forth special. If you shot hundreds of images going back and forth for this one and this one, you can have more right here and what's nice if you hold down to get rid of this, By the way, some people get really annoyed there, like, how do I can't get rid of it. If you click on it one more time, it will disappear. So anyways, there's lots of gotchas Photoshopped Bridge. They're all filled with these little digital landmines if you notice that they're everywhere, so try to avoid him where you can so you can do side by side comparisons. Let's say we're not quite sure which one's great. I held down shift and I selected both at same time. So this is kind of the process that I will do when I'm really trying to figure out if I like that pose of the other one. I might notice the lights is a little bit different on one or another, or this one might be too hard to select, right? So I could make my choice there on Great accordingly. But I think that that one should should do it. They're like the helpers as well. That's great. So once I go through in rate, uh, let's see. Here we go. This is this is why we came here, right? Um, checking on the little buck snort. There was a little bit of motion blur for what we're doing. This will be just fine. The hair is so soft, we're not gonna get super clean, you know, selection with that, but it it will be It will be workable for what we're doing here. So I predict we'll find out, though, so But I think there was some some good ones in there, uh, that we we can use between that one. Um and possibly that one. I think that's the one, though. What do you think? That one. OK, there we go. So in order to give it five stars here, Uh, So Okay, so we have one of the animal, Uh, and what's nice about something that is levitating? It's good to get it as close as you can in the exact spot. But what's also helpful is that it doesn't need to be precise compared to someone that's on the ground right where you have a shadow of that kind. Because in levitation they're levitating. You could move them around a little bit. So with the dog will get a little bit of leeway to kind of, you know, getting in position to where the spot that we want. So let's say we do that one, and let's see as faras the mom will do that one, okay? And his groceries will definitely do that one. All right, so now let's pick some of the other the other objects here, I'm gonna clear my filter. So, in case you ever stuck in here and you want to get rid of that filter, you can clear it's Now, let's check out the bagels. Had a John do. Okay. Hope yet make sure my camera and see how it was flickering that was going back and forth between my raw and my J peg images. All right. And actually, the ones at the very end were quite nice here with these large files. Sometimes they take a while to render before you actually see them here. So we just have to be patient again. Okay. Beautiful bagel, right? That's a five star bagel right there. Ok, uh, let's see, Although I kind of like that one with the shadow there. So we'll give that five star as well, Okay. And a lemon. You know, I realized we're doing golden colored objects on a golden wall, Uh, brilliantly planned out there. Uh, eso eso. We'll see how that turns out. We may have toe pump their contrast or make it a lime instead, which is fun to do, actually. Might be a good good thing. We can change in there. Okay, so we have our actually. Let's see. Okay, the bagels there. So I'm just looking right now at the position where that bagel was in relation to that. As long as they're separate, that's fine. So see how they're just slightly offset. As we go back, we can do it into animation. Okay, so with that, I'm gonna filter to all my five stars. So I go to my star rating and say, Show me only the five stars and we should have our pieces here, right? At least one of each. So it's choose. Let's do that one. Make this a four star There goes. Okay. There's the face. Yes. All right, There's Mom. There's the dog Will play run with the dog again, since the dog has a miniature, you know, look to it. Um, it's gonna be interesting in general to get it looking just right. So but here's here's our options. So I'm actually gonna edit all of these since they're all gonna have This is another great thing about bridge is you could do the sort of batch edits or batch adjustments in the camera raw editor. So I'm in a double click so I can click all of them by holding down shift after clicking on one, hold down shift, Click on the other one. You can also do command A or control A. If you're on a PC, but command A If you're on a Mac, you know, just selects everything there. Uh, then I can double click on one of these little thumbnails. Don't try double clicking on these. You'll just get a little loop that will show you the focus. That's an easy gotcha. People will try to do so with this. If I make adjustments right now, it's just gonna be for that one, right? You see that one on top there, Um so commands thee that I want all of these selected so that command a or control A for PC, um should select it, or you can do the other method hold down shift. So once they're all selected, any adjustments that I do it a temperature or anything, it's gonna edit all of them at once, Which is great, right? It makes it so much easier rather than customizing each one. Um, right as we're going here. So everything was shot just a little bit dark. We're gonna boost it up again. We're just gonna kind of highball s. And this thing sort of crushes the look of it in general. So afterwards, you guys can see how what? I was actually looking at here, as you know, but I'm gonna boost up the exposure a little bit in general, it might need to be a little bit warmer once I bring it into the composite. So I kind of do that now with the temperature and, um, the reason why in general, especially when you're doing composites, it's really important to get everything sink. And I'll get sort of an eyeball proximity to what is in the camera. Rob, Uh, but one. Not only do things look off if they're two different in color, but what you're when you're trying to make everything really come together having a color, harmony in general or where that the gamut is just a little bit more narrowed really helps, especially for composites. When you're doing colors all over the place, it will look off, right. It will look just to fake special when you're expecting it to be Photoshopped, right are edited. Eso limiting that gamut where things are matching in general a little bit more really helps so often do that you'll see again the next class. I will bring down the exposure or the excuse me, the, uh, saturation of all the layers in a certain group. That way they sink in together, but we'll get to that So with this one, that should be good. They're all just kind of Look, a few of these, uh, excellent. Jumping out of the way. So that looks a little bit too. Ah, a little overblown there because they're closer to that light. So let's look at this one. Okay, so we're just a little bit over exposed to the dog. One was fine. Dog was further away. Plus live it darker. So when these ones I'm gonna select these ones that just feel a little bit too much. Uh, I'm just dial it back down there, getting some motion blur as well. I'll add to it. We'll see what that does. Okay. Okay. So once I have that, I'm going to select them all. Uh, that I'm gonna open them all in a photo shop if I wanted to keep them all is a smart objects that we can keep on doing sliders. That's pretty neat. If you hold down, was it shift? If you hold on shift, it will open these a smart object, which is great. That means that any time they double clicking this layers inside a photo shop, he'll pull up this adobe camera Editor which is awesome and it's non destructive. So if you want to work completely non destructive, that's a great way to go. I don't know what that does as faras bloating the file size. So especially when I'm working with these 42 megapixel images that huge. And so we may come into some problems as faras you know, lag or zooming. So in general, I try to keep it nondestructive, but also be sensitive as to not bloating my file, which it can can happen. I love to do smart objects within smart objects, right and relates for shot file within Photoshopped file, and it just gets immense. But that's all go. So I'm just gonna open these that way I can copy. Paste just is needed here.