What I'll do now before we take our white rabbit away is just do a very quick mock-up in Photoshop and check that it's all going to work before we move on, because this is the thing, you can't, you don't wanna have to come back later on, bring your rabbit back or your client back if you don't get it. So that's why I highly recommend tethering, shooting with your gear all hooked up to a computer or even an iPad, so that you can check that you've got the right thing. So I'll crop that one. And bring that in as a smart object in Photoshop. And drag that one into Wonderland. And change the size. I do still want my rabbit to be oversized in regards to the scene, because it's a magical scene. It doesn't need to be accurate with the sizing of the rabbit. And then we'll bring in the legs. And go for one of these earlier ones here, yeah. So any of these could work. I'm going to try with this one here. And I'll crop down to somewhere around here, because what I want to do is make sure that the r...

abbit's sizing is correct. So when I join him up, that the head's at the right sort of point in terms of his size. And if I was to crop right down here and then try and add all of the costume, I might not have enough to work with. So it's better to have more to work with than too little. Now, open that one in Photoshop as well. Now, the reason I'm shooting on black for this is probably obvious, but I'll explain it. It's because the rabbit is white. So to cut the rabbit out on black makes it really easy, but most of the time, I do photograph with a green screen. And there are ways to remove the green spill when you're photographing. But when something is very close to the ground, I don't photograph green. I don't have the green running down on the ground, because it splashes back too much. So when I'm photographing with a green screen, which you'll see later on, it's at the back and then I have a neutral color on the floor. So for this, it's just easier to use black overall and have someone dressed in black and cut around that way. And then you use the hair brush in Photoshop to mask around those finer areas that don't quite cut out the way that you want. So I'll drag that into Wonderland. Our body and feet. And resize, I'm pressing Shift when I resize so that it holds the proportions. I'm looking at the size of the other head there. Now, I may, tomorrow or later on, I may actually change the selection here, but I mainly wanting to make sure that I've got something that I can work with. Oops. Okay, so I'll drag the head on top. So change the layer order. So it needs to be bigger. The reason that you stay as smart object as well is because when you resize, it still retains all the resolution. So you want to keep your objects a smart object as long as you can. Okay. All right, we've got a rabbit standing up at the moment. She's not looking exactly how we want, because she's not dressed. She hasn't got a pocket watch, but that's all coming. I'm grouping these together now and resizing. All I wanna do here is take the background away the same way that I did before with this Selection tool, this Smart Selection tool. And inverse. Okay, so now I've got a rabbit, not too much distraction there. I can see where the angle works. I'll do the same thing here. And using a soft-edged brush, I'm just gonna blend around here so I've got the head. Okay. Now, the other thing that's going to happen when I put this rabbit together is this bit behind the rabbit's head, I'm not wanting. So if you've got a white rabbit in a scene in Alice in Wonderland, the head's actually sticking up and then the body's down here. So I can do a very quick mask using my brush just to see how that would look. And it's very rough and it's just to get an idea of how it's going to look. All of that refining happens later on. Okay, so it's rough. We've got a rabbit standing up looking like it's running. We've got a head and I think we're ready to photograph our costume and see whether we fit everything together. So well done, white rabbit. Thank you, let's give the white rabbit a clap. So you touched on it a little bit, but we did have questions about the importance of using smart objects as you're doing that. Could you expand on that a little? And I will talk more about as I do the editing as well. But smart objects are the non-destructive way of editing. So by integrating smart objects, we are keeping all the information. So by opening from Lightroom into Photoshop, it's got all the raw adjustment abilities. So when you're in Lightroom and you're shooting with raw, you can change highlights, shadows, exposure. You can do just about everything. Now, if you make those changes in Lightroom and you then open it as a smart object in Photoshop, those changes are retained and editable. So when you double-click the smart object, and I might just do that right now, it will open in Camera Raw and you can continue to edit. So I can bring back the detail in the rabbit's fur, which I'll be doing when I run through this prop layer later on. But you can do all of your changes and retain all of those changes, hit Okay, and the changes reflect back into your scene. So that's one reason. The other reason for smart objects are that, you know, as I was resizing them, they're retaining all of the resolution. If you rasterize it and you make it larger and then you make it smaller and you make it larger again, you'll cause issues with your resolution, you'll lose information, you'll have pixelation. So all this stuff happens to your image. Whereas if you keep it as a smart object, you're keeping all of that original information. It's kind of like boxed in and held in there. And yeah, you're working non-destructively. So best way to work. The other thing I did when I was dragging those smart objects into Photoshop may only work in the latest version of Photoshop. So just in case you're working on an older version of Photoshop and you're finding this isn't working, all you need to do is you need to drag your smart object file into a separate window and then drag it onto your scene. So just in case that that's not working for you, that's the way around it. That's only a recent change to Photoshop.

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Photoshop Brushes

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Karen Alsop

Karen Alsop is an internationally acclaimed Melbourne, Australia-based photographic digital artist. Expanding on two decades of photographic and graphic design experience, Karen brings photography and art together to create stunning artworks that tell a story and take the viewer into another world.

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topics covered in this class

Portrait Photography Adobe Photoshop Family & Lifestyle Photo Editing Digital Photography

Ratings and Reviews

Judy Mitschelen

I've found many great instructors at CreativeLive and Karen ranks right up there at the top! With her relaxed, thoughtful manner of presenting, I was immediately hooked. Her organization, clear explanations and demonstration, and on target response to questions are superb. This course covers an amazing range of skills and tricks of the trade. Whether you're interested in getting better shots to work with, better workflow at the computer, or better output at the end, Karen covers it all.

Kim

Karen is very talented and a great teacher and I enjoyed every minute of the course. But what I found to be the best part was seeing what an amazing person she is. The video of compositing the disabled children to make their dreams come true had me in tears. It has inspired me to use my talents to help others and not learn photo manipulation for self enjoyment. God bless you Karen.

Endigo Rae

This was such an amazing class! Karen is so talented, inspiring, and such an amazing teacher. Very forthcoming and open about all of her techniques. I'm so looking forward to jumping into compositing, I feel like this is definitely something my soul desires to explore and Karen has made it so easy and accesible through her beautiful course! Thanks so much Karen and CreativeLive!

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Mock Up of Rabbit in Photoshop™

Mock Up of Rabbit in Photoshop™

Lesson Info

6. Mock Up of Rabbit in Photoshop™

Lessons

Class Introduction

Adding Fine Art Compositing to Your Business

Background Plate Workflow

Setting Up Studio for Shoot

Photograph the Rabbit