Spill Light: Painting with Light to Blend
Lesson 26 from: Using Composite Photography to Create a Fantasy WorldKaren Alsop
Spill Light: Painting with Light to Blend
Lesson 26 from: Using Composite Photography to Create a Fantasy WorldKaren Alsop
Lesson Info
26. Spill Light: Painting with Light to Blend
Lessons
Class Introduction
03:01 2Adding Fine Art Compositing to Your Business
24:28 3Background Plate Workflow
22:54 4Setting Up Studio for Shoot
09:04 5Photograph the Rabbit
05:09 6Mock Up of Rabbit in Photoshop™
08:56 7Photograph The Rabbit Costume
34:34 8Setting up the Studio to Shoot with a Green Screen
03:41Photographing the Child in Segments
27:22 10Photographing Hair in Motion
29:46 11Getting a Great Costume Shot
11:21 12Use Lightroom to Choose the Best Images
13:07 13Make Selections in Photoshop™
15:08 14How to Use Photoshop™ Brushes to Mask Out Images
22:36 15Crop Out & Add Costume to Rabbit
27:41 16Warp Techniques to Fit Costume to Rabbit
20:31 17Shading & Shadows on & Under Rabbit
31:50 18Change color of Rabbit Costume
12:00 19Remove Green Screen from Child Image
08:22 20Background Plate Workflow
21:40 21How to Create a Brush
11:25 22Add Layers to Create Full Looking Hair
27:49 23Add Shadows to Image
05:57 24Workflow: Group Rabbit & Child Images
10:47 25Match the Scene with Color
05:31 26Spill Light: Painting with Light to Blend
09:46 27Levels Adjustment Layers: Shading & Rim Lighting
04:59 28Finalize Image Workflow in Lightroom™
08:36 29Export Image in Different Formats
15:44 30Marketing Composite Photography to Clients
17:13 31Presenting Image to Client
23:06Lesson Info
Spill Light: Painting with Light to Blend
After I've done that, then I want to bring some light over like there's light rays sort of spilling through the person. So turning on a new layer and this one here we'll call light, this is light that's going to spill over the top of Alice and it's going to spread not only on Alice but also on our background as well. There'll just be a few spots, mainly where the light is hitting the corner of her head. So you'll have more of this, the more light and the more sky you have behind your subject, the more of this sort of light spill that you could create. In one of my images, Geppetto's workshop, there's a lot of light spill and if you watch the speed edit that I've got up on my website, there's light cracking through the background, light cracking through all the cracks in the walls. So that has a lot of light spill, whereas this particular image, she's in front of trees as well, so you wouldn't see as much light coming through. But we'll turn this onto the light layer, pick up from the s...
ky, again, looking at the lightest part of the sky, that pinky color that's coming through, a bigger, very soft brush, the flow is up to 100% just so we can see it, the hardness is down to zero. And just a dab here. Again, I need to pull it down, but you can sorta see that light now over the top of the tree, over the top of the sky, and over the top of her. Perhaps another little dab here, and again, it's bringing her into the scene more. Perhaps some of the ground color, no that's too dark, so let's go with the sky color and turn the flow down. And just have a couple little light spills coming through the hair. We wouldn't have as much down at the feet here because there's not as many areas where that light would spill through, but we can have just a touch. Remembering I'm gonna turn this down again, so just a touch coming through the bottom. It all helps to bring our subject into the scene. Turning down the opacity. Until its subtle effect of light flowing over the top of our character. Let's zoom back out. So if I turn these on and off, all of those adjustments, we'll just turn them off individually. Okay, that's before. And that's after, it probably still needs a little bit of refining but just to give you that idea of light spilling over characters, so every single element that you put into your composite, if you do that, if you just bring some light around the side of them, then that helps to bring them into the scene more. Let's do the same with the rabbit. So up to the rabbit group. Zooming up on him. Mr. Rabbit. So as I was saying before, this is kinda the point where I would transfer my image to the main computer, because we're working with so many layers and we're keeping all of those smart layers and all of the information in the image which I feel is important. There's many times that I've needed to go back to an image and refine it, and if I had flattened it off, I wouldn't have the ability to do so. There's plenty of times where, as you're learning, you realize you can do a bit more work to an image, you wanna be able to come back to it, so having all of those layers is important, but you do need to have a lot of RAM in your computer to handle it, so, desktop computers that you can put a whole lot more RAM into them, when you start to get to this amount of layers can be very helpful. Okay so we've got our rabbit. Let's do the light spill clip to the rabbit first, and then some light spill outside of the rabbit. There won't be as much, he's right on the ground, so there's probably a little bit of that sandy colored area that needs to com onto his feet. Okay, so, grabbing a brush, again it's the soft brush, and alt, pick up the color. We'll just paint some around his feet. We did have a question that was kinda more in general, that says please ask Karen what she believes is the initial learning curve. So many people who showed their student work in our student work gallery are so top notch. Yikes, do I not have a chance? So can you talk a little bit about, as we wait, just what it does take, but maybe some encouragement. I need to post some of my early work, I think. That would be great. See. Oh I thought it was wonderful what I was creating and then I look back at it, I notice all the issues that I had with it. I wasn't considering the light. I wasn't considering the angles. I wasn't considering, so all these things that I've been focusing on, perspective, light, color, all of these things I just think that you learn over time and it's certainly doable. My early images are terrible. I think everyone has the images that they go back to and think, oh, I wish it wasn't even out there on the web. It's a learning curve and it does take time. It's not something that you're going to get right overnight. That's the thing I found, the best way that I could learn is just every image that I create, set myself a goal, start simple, start with one background, if you're just starting out, start with one background, one subject, try and match that up, get that all right and then move on, try and keep it simple and then give yourself a challenge. Every single image that you create, make it a little harder each time so that you're learning something every time that you do it. It just takes time. So, yeah. (chuckles) Pick it up, painting it on. Still struggling with it, that's okay. Going to zoom out. And so you can see a little bit of color coming into the rabbit there. Just around the edges, that light that would be bouncing up from the floor, from the ground. And turning down the opacity. So looking at it from a distance just to see how it looks. Zooming up again. So it's just subtle. Now, the next layer for the rabbit, I don't want to clip, I just want the light flowing around so releasing the clipping mask. Picking up even some light from the sky. And, just painting it on, particularly around the edges. Just where there might be some light spill coming around the corners of the rabbit, just soft little dabs. Turning it down. Now some of these layers you could actually make, I'll make them darker so you can see. So it's more obvious. You can actually change the modes here. So these modes here, the overlay, soft light, hard light are often the ones that I use when I'm overlaying light and painting with light. Particularly soft light. So it's just a subtle color coming over the top that's bringing in some of the light around. Again, it's very subtle. Hard light is more obvious. And overlay, it does it a different way, so it's good to play with the three different ones there and see if any of those are working well. So going onto probably soft light for this one, and what you can do is you can actually paint some of that very subtle pink color over your subject, and I am probably going to clip this one to our rabbit here, so create a clipping mask and then do one more layer which is just that light spill, so that layer there is some of the pink that's cascading onto his fur, and then one more layer, just some very subtle little dabs. And turning it down. Zooming out. Okay.
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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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