Composite photography

To begin, it’s important that you have a concrete idea of the final image you want to create. If it helps, write a list of what you want to achieve and outline the steps and considerations needed for each phase.

Whenever you’re working with multiple images, remember to consider the size of each. This is especially important if you’re combining your own photos with stock photos, where the quality and resolution can be very different. In this case, you may have to reduce the size of one and increase the size of the other.

A useful tip that Viktor demonstrated to help ‘reduce’ image quality was to use the Noise filter (you can see how he did this in chapter two of our ‘Compositing using Photoshop’ course).

Other elements to consider are light and perspective. These are crucial if you want to produce a believable image. Mismatched lighting and different perspectives are sure signs that an image is not real.

These problems can be overcome using simple Photoshop tools such as the Transform tool, which can be used to flip, warp or rotate elements, while adjustment layers are essential for correcting brightness and colour.

Unfortunately there is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to how to make a composite picture in Photoshop. Each image requires different treatment and different levels of adjustment. However, there are a few tools and techniques that you’ll most likely finding yourself using time and time again. Below I discuss some of the tools and techniques demonstrated in our composite tutorials.

When it comes to combining different pictures, it goes without saying that you’ll be working with multiple layers, so having a good grasp of layers and layers masks is essential (if you’re unfamiliar with this, you can learn more in this Photoshop layer masks tutorial). Using layer masks allows you a much greater degree of flexibility than simply erasing or deleting part of the image.

How do you create a layer mask in Photoshop?

1. Select the layer in the Layer panel
2. Click the ‘Add a mask’ button at the bottom of the panel. This will apply a white layer mask, which reveals everything on the selected layer.

3. To hide the selected layer, invert the mask (Command I / Ctrl I). You can then reveal what was hidden by using your Brush tool (set to white) and painting over the area you want to show. If you find you’ve revealed too much, simply switch your brush to black (you can do this by pressing X on your keyboard) and paint over the area you want to hide again.

Working with layers also allows you to create adjustment layers and add effects such as noise, blur or colour overlays. By using layers, you’ll have a much greater degree of control (compared to if you apply adjustments directly to the image) and be able to make further changes if you need to, later down the line.

Composite photography often requires selecting and cutting out objects, which is often done using the different Photoshop selection tools. However, Viktor recommended using the Pen tool, a powerful yet often overlooked Photoshop tool.

The Pen tool is a great option for quickly cutting out subjects with relatively hard edges or where there is low contrast (as with our fireman’s black helmet set against the dark background), where automatic selection tools such as the magic wand may struggle.

You can see how Viktor uses the Pen tool here.

To help blend different objects into your scene, a certain degree of colour grading or adjustment will probably be necessary. Depending on what you want to achieve, you’ll need to use different adjustment layers. For example, if you’re looking to change contrast, you may want to use a Levels adjustment, or if you’re changing colour you may want to use the Hue/Saturation or Curves adjustment.

Using different blend modes can also help with making your scene more believable. As the name suggests, blend modes help blend selected layers with the layer below, based on what mode is selected. The different blend modes are split into different groups — Normal, Darken, Lighten, Contrast, Inversion, Cancelation and Component.

Using smart objects isn’t essential when it comes to compositing, but it can help make the job easier. By converting an image to a smart object, Photoshop allows you to preserve the original characteristics of an image, which allows you to perform non-destructive editing to the layer.

Additional advantages of using smart objects include:

• Non-destructive transforms — You can scale, rotate, skew, distort, perspective transform, or warp a layer without losing original image data or quality.
• Non-destructive filters — You can edit filters applied to Smart Objects at any time.
• Link smart objects — If you have duplicates of an image, you can edit one copy and all instances where the image is used will update automatically.
• Layer masks — You can apply layer masks that are either linked or unlinked to the Smart Object layer.
  

How do you create a smart object in Photoshop?

There are two ways to convert an image to a smart object:

1. Using the Filter tab, click on ‘Convert for Smart Filters’
2. Using the Layer tab, go to Smart Objects and click on ‘Convert to Smart Object’

When it comes to compositing, you can use a combination of photos, stock images and even CGI elements, as I mentioned earlier. But including each of these can take time, especially if you have to transform them and make colour adjustments. If you’re looking to add simple elements like clouds or smoke, the Brush tool can be a useful option.

In our fireman composite, we could easily have used a stock image of smoke, but the Brush tool provided a quick and effective alternative. By customising the various brush setting and experimenting with different blend modes, we were able to create a realistic looking smoke simply and effectively.

Throughout our compositing course, Viktor applied various filters, most commonly Gaussian Blur and Noise. He used these for blending images together and changing the apparent quality of images.

NOTE: If you’re unfamiliar with any of the techniques above, visit our Post Production section, where I cover all of these in more detail in our Photoshop for Photographer course.