Lessons
Day 1
1Introduction to Compositing
19:38 2Composite Build-Ups
26:26 3Fantasy Composite Shoot Setup
24:00 4Fantasy Composite Shoot Setup Part 2
31:45 5Shoot: Fantasy Composite
27:42 6Compositing Fantasy Background Part 1
33:26 7Compositing Fantasy Background Part 2
47:16Compositing Headdress and Details
25:43 9Compositing Special Effects
28:40 10Compositing Finishing Touches
25:46Day 2
11Recap of Fantasy Image
09:37 12Soccer Shoot Background Overview
23:59 13Soccer Shoot Studio Prep
15:25 14Green Screen Q&A
15:08 15Soccer Shoot: Lighting Test
21:10 16Soccer Shoot: Test Shots & Rough Composite
38:39 17Soccer Shoot: Jump Shot Part 1
19:28 18Soccer Shoot: Jump Shot Part 2
26:11 19Soccer Shoot: Shirtless Jump Shot
16:30 20Soccer Shoot: Additional Elements
31:53 21Soccer Shoot: Portrait
22:12Day 3
22Sketching for Composites
31:52 23Compositing Soccer Image Background Part 1
25:00 24Compositing Soccer Image Background Part 2
24:44 25Compositing Soccer Stadium Lights
19:33 26Compositing Soccer Player Part 1
22:44 27Compositing Soccer Player Part 2
22:58 28Compositing Additional Elements Part 1
38:43 29Compositing Additional Elements Part 2
29:06 30Compositing Brightness and Light
13:01 31Working with Color
28:41 32Lighting Effects
25:58 33Compositing Soccer Portrait
18:01Lesson Info
Recap of Fantasy Image
building building an image like this we talked about yesterday the it's so important to be ableto have your background ready to g o before the day of the photo shoot and I think everyone in the studio audience kind of learned how important that was especially when we started bringing in like this this light so when we have you know the highlight here in the background and then we place that light tio to echo the highlights here on the subject you're not able to do that sort of thing unless you have your background already created so that's such an important part of thes photoshopped composites and building the background you know it doesn't have to be just a stock image it can it can be something that you built from a bunch of different photos and then bringing your subject into that makes his maid a lot easier if you already have that background ready to go so what we're going to do we're going to start off today with a little bit of recap from yesterday and I figured we could take so...
me time because I really yesterday I wanted to like hit it hard so everyone could have a really good idea of like okay you can actually do all this in a day like you know think about even if I was teaching yesterday right and I was talking but think about like if you didn't have the teaching and the talking and all that stuff if you were just going to work like you could totally make this in an afternoon like we did it you know in the middle of a lesson so I wanted to like kind of bring home the fact that it's it's not something that's it's like huge beast to conquer these are things that you can totally do in an afternoon and we're going to take the next two days to produce another amazing shoot but I wanted to build in a lot of time for questions so everyone really gets a great understanding of like what we're doing and why we're doing it in really every step along the way we've got some great time in this first segment to go over green screen questions which I'm more than happy to answer any of those and I want to go through the layers for anyone who might have missed yesterday I want to go through the layers of this image and kind of build it back up from scratch and if we did have any remaining questions from yesterday we're going to go through those as well and then we're going to go bring up the last slide from our keynote yesterday and kind of talk about the differences in the important things when creating a closet then I'm going to show you guys the image the background image for today's composite so I created this last night after teaching went out for some indian food came back to the hotel room and brought a bunch of stock images together to create the image for love for today and that it brings up another couple of good points we have ah really good base for a stock image for today that we're going to be matching but these stock images you can you can change them after the fact like yesterday for instance you guys remember how we stretch the mountains we moved the placement of the mountains even even after our subject was in there that's something you can do after the fact to you want to get a pretty good idea of what your background is gonna look like especially when it comes to lighting but if you want to change into bill individual elements you can do that sort of thing after the fact so let's go ahead and jump into this composite and we're just going to kind of go through in photoshopped turn some of these layers often on and we can answer any any remaining questions that we have left all right so here's our psd from yesterday and I'm just basically going to strip this all the way back down to the beginning so we talked yesterday about starting with starting with those elements that are you know the furthest back in the actual photo we want those to be our bottom most layer so most cases especially if you're gonna be creating a composite that's gonna be the sky right the sky's gonna be the furthest thing away and you'll see that reflected in our composite for today for our for a soccer shoot as well from there we built on a little bit of details to the sky we built in lightning and if you guys remember we just changed blending modes to get that in there let's just turn these layers off the hugh saturation and the levels adjustment layer and then I'm gonna change this from a screen back to a normal flair so for everyone at home who might have missed this thinking like oh man I got to do such a good job layer masking out my lightning I didn't do that right that's the worst later mask ever created but it doesn't need to be good and if you use these tools things like a screen blending mode what that does is it knocks out the blacks so it takes care of most you're late I'm asking for you adjusted just a little bit in your lightning is is pretty much exactly what it needs to be all right then we brought in our mountains and if you guys remember we did quite a bit of adjustment on these mountains and these are our clipping masks layers that basically on ly affect the melton layer so that's why you'll see these little down arrows I'm just going to kind of turn these off all right and scroll down here and I'm gonna shift click on the layer mask here so we can see what that original sake mention looked like so completely different sky we mask that out we changed our brightness on this we worked on our color kind of set these mountains back in space a little bit more brought in the highlights and the shadow colors from our environment and created something that was a little bit more dynamic so from there we brought in a little bit of farm which was just done a fun little experiment we brought into the birds in the background which I think that was a lot of people's favorite way saw how easy it is to put birds in an image like I have a feeling they're going to a lot of birds in composite photos we brought in a moon which I actually forgot about and then we did do some coloring to this and that was done after our subject was brought into the image so here we have our subject I'm just going to scroll down we've got a bunch of different layers here that air clipped to our subject as well so let's go ahead and turn all these off so you can see we did make changes you know to our subject after she's brought into the image but nothing nothing dramatic let's just go ahead and shift click on the layer mask so you can see what that looks like and as I'm going through these layers hopefully everyone's getting a pretty good feel of when when you're working with this sort of thing in photoshopped you wanna look working non destructive as possible so for instance here like I've still got all my layers intact like I can show you what the original image looks like for every one of these I'm not doing things like merging my layers together I'm not like applying layer masks and things like that that is the original image and we're just working on the same lame asked for that image and then I'm using these adjustment layers on a clipping mask to just affect that layer so I'm gonna shift click and reactivate that layer mask that we spent you know I think it was a really good lesson yesterday getting that leather mask roughed in just doing a quick selection with the go to select and then down to color range choosing that green and knocking that out quickly and then anywhere areas that required a little bit more detail we tackled that through our channels so and that was all done on the same layer mask we just kept on making more and more advanced elections and then editing that on the same layer mask and then we have all these layers that are basically just kind of working with color here on our subject we can see there we've kind of brought in some of the light from the background making our subjects face a little bit brighter bring the huge saturation lowering that on the bottom of her trust bringing in some of these thiss was actually really cool bringing the tattoos and kind of like the face paint into the rest of her body and there we go and then we brought this or been with some really cool special effects free because you guys who weren't here yesterday basically we just brought in some pictures of northern lights and photograph this orb here in the studio and then made everything it's just the lead layers we don't need so we started off with basically just this picture of an orb and then we brought in all these extra little details and adjustment layers to add some color and special effects too this or too really just kind of make it look like it is a more of a fantasy element and then here at the end we just as it's a coloring which again through a little bit more attention to that orb so this is kind of what I would consider when you're doing a composite like up until up until this point I would treat this image as it is now almost like straight out of camera so getting your image together and getting that composite toe where you want it that's that's a huge step of the game but then don't forget those extra little steps I find that those like that extra like five or ten percent at the end you're edit that's what really like it brings the magic together like this is great right here but when we turn these layers on it's really it's subtle but it makes a really big difference it turns it from just like a photo or a snapshot in my opinion to a piece of art and that stuff it doesn't take a lot of time and it's usually the end five or ten percent so if you guys are getting into compositing and you know getting inside about a photo shop and working with your images don't forget to like put that extra five or ten percent in at the very end go through play with like you know color balance layers and curves adjustment layers and levels and add some colors to the image because it's really going to make a difference there at the end and yeah and then we were able to create that you know in an afternoon from building the background from completely from scratch mr stock images photographing our subject and the orb compositing that together and creating the special effects around the orb which is I think it's pretty amazing that we're able to one day
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Kim
This was the Best Creative Live course I have had the pleasure to watch. Aaron was so informative and explained each technique very well. He was so pleasant to watch because he was so humble and was so happy and excited about what he was creating. What an excellent teacher. I hope he does more seminars.
Juli Miranda
I love the class he is generous, clear an super fun!! i highly recomend it. A lot of trics and cool information. He is Great teacher and super high level photoshoper... So greatfull. thanks!
Curtis Roberts
Fantastic Course! I've watched (and purchased) many courses from Creative Live, and there are many good instructors; excellent instructors, in fact. Aaron's course on compositing essentials is one of the best. In addition to being a technical expert, he is a great teacher; a real talent. Great information and good illustrations/explanations. He does go a little fast when using Photoshop, and while I was trying to find the short-cuts keys, I would find he was three more points down the trail ahead of me. (That's part of why I bought the course ;-) )
Student Work
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