Complete compositing in Photoshop

11 Pages·0.455 MB·English

Complete compositing
in Photoshop

One: Set up the background
image
The starting point is the

coastline landscape - download

it, named Coastline.zip,

courtesy of PhotoDisc...

Two: Fill in the sky
Don't compromise on the look
of your image. Use Photoshop
to add what's missing and
remove unwanted bits & pieces

Three: Add the Tsunami
You've done the sky - now it's
time to make some waves,

Niagara-style...

Four: Now for the pyros
We've got the waves going -

now it's time for the final

destruction. Holy meteorites!

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One: Set up the background image

Our starting point is a
coastline landscape,
which we'll use as the basis
for our composite image. The
first thing we have to decide is
how to crop the image,

because at the moment the
aspect ratio is wrong - it's too
long and narrow. You can
download this image,
Coastline.zip, courtesy of

PhotoDisc.

However, rather than use
the Crop tool and thereby
lose data, you can create a
new document with your
chosen dimensions. We've
gone for 2048x932, which
gives the aspect ratio of 70mm
film, for a cinematic feel.

Drag the Coastline layer
into the new document,
resize it and move it until
you're happy - you still have
the option to move it because
you didn't crop the image. The

foreground doesn't need to be
too high because all the action
will be in the distance. Our
first problem is that there's
not enough sky

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Two: Fill in the sky

To fill in the missing sky,
sample two blues from the
background image as your
foreground and background
colours. Choose a dark one
and a light one. Then create a
linear gradient in the
background layer. Contrary to
what you might expect, the
gradient blends better if you
draw it horizontally.

Add a layer mask to the
Coastline layer and begin
masking with a large brush
(using black in the layer
mask). Doing this, you soften
the transition between the
fake and real sky. Perfect!Add

a layer mask to the Coastline
layer and begin masking with
a large brush (using black in
the layer mask). Doing this,

you soften the transition
between the fake and real sky.
Perfect!

Next, we need to see more
of the sea, but part of the
coastline is in the way. You
can remove it easily by
drawing a mask with the Pen
tool. Begin placing points
along the edge of the
foreground hill. Click to place
a corner point, drag to make a
Bezier curve point. Continue
along the bridge and down
around the edge of the screen,

back to where you started.

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Load the Pen path as a
selection (click the button
at the bottom of the Paths
palette), then copy and paste
it as a new layer. By hiding the
original background, you can
see that we've isolated the
foreground of the image
nicely.

With the foreground
isolated, you can go ahead
and merge the background
and fake sky layers. Link them
together and choose Merge
Linked from the Layer

palette's Options menu.

Scale the background
horizontally with the Free
Transform tool to get rid of the
unwanted coastline. The sea
will be composited with other
images, so any distortion
doesn't matter. You can
download the file for this
stage as armag.zip.

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Three: Add the Tsunami

Download Wave.zip, open
and drag it into the
composite document. Move it
between the Bridge layer and
stretched background. Oooh -
major catastrophe imminent.

Without any effort, the
composite image looks
okay - but we're not interested
in just okay. The trick in
getting your different
elements to look convincing
when they're composited is
attention to detail. First, let's
bring the original sky back by
quickly masking the wave with
the Pen tool. Don't be too
precise - we'll blend it in later.

You can see straight away
what's wrong. The colours
in the wave don't match the
sea too well, and the contrast
is too snappy. Since the
wave's in the middle distance,
it should be affected by a little

haze. Begin softening the
mask with a brush to blend
away the wave near the
coastline

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To change the colours of
the Wave layer, add a
Hue/Saturation Adjustment
layer. Add a mask to the
Adjustment layer by first
loading the wave's layer mask
as a selection, then
subtracting the foreground
layer's transparency mask
from it. Do this by
Control/Command+Option-
clicking the layer. Now use
this selection to fill the
Hue/Saturation layer with
black, creating a mask that
only affects the Wave layer.

Load the selection again
(Control/Command-click
the Hue/Saturation Layer
icon), and add a Levels
Adjustment layer. Pull up the
Black Output slider and

increase the Gamma to add
some contrast-reducing haze
to the Wave layer. It now
matches the foreground much
better.

Next, duplicate your Wave
layer. We'll paint in some
shadows using the Burn tool.
Look at the bridge and notice
that the shadows are falling as
if the sun is behind you and to

the left. Use the Burn tool to
paint in corresponding
shadows on the wave, but
take care and use a low
opacity.

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You can add some extra
spray by duplicating the
wave again, moving it to the
left and masking out a large
portion that overlaps the
main wave. Reduce the
opacity of the Wave Shadow

layer in order to control the
darkness of the shadows.

To make more sense of
the composition, we're
going to add a city to the
background. Download and
open City.zip and drag it into
the comp. Drag the layer

below the wave and above
the Bridge layer. Use the
Clone tool to remove the top
of the bridge; the rest is
hidden by the wave.

Hmm... It doesn't match
up too well. Luckily,
there's an excellent trick to
match colours when comping
images. Duplicate the Bridge
layer and move it above the
City layer, quickly painting
out the clouds from the sky
because they'll cause
problems. Now change the
blending mode to Colour - et
voil^! It's perfectly matched

and you didn't have to mess
about with the
Hue/Saturation command.

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Four: Now for the pyros

Add the first explosion -
Download and open
Explo1.zip. Drag it into the
composition, move it to the
top to place the explosion
behind the clouds. Use a low
opacity and a fairly large
brush, then blend it in.

Next, we can add in the
source of the explosions -
some meteorites. Download
and open the three Meteor
files and drag them into your
composition. These files
haven't been masked, but

applying them in Screen mode
makes the black disappear.
(Screen mode is generally
recommended for
compositing bright objects.)
Using the Free Transform tool
to elongate them helps too.

Duplicate one of the
Meteor layers and bring it
near to the city.Download and
open the file Explo2.zip and
position it to create an impact
explosion. Add a layer mask
and mask out some of the
explosion, either with a brush
or using the Pen tool, so it
looks like the explosion's
behind some of the buildings -
shown here in Quick Mask
mode.
8
We've added another,
larger meteorite, which is
just about to strike the city.
Again, to position the meteor
behind a building we added a
layer mask and drew in the
building's silhouette. Only a

handful of pixels have been
masked out, but small details
such as this make a huge
difference.

Add smoke trails to your
meteorites. Draw a dark
grey horizontal line in a new
transparent layer, then apply a
Motion Blur set slightly at an
angle to blur and thicken the
line. Add Noise with Preserve
Transparency switched on,
and finally apply some
Gaussian Blur. Make
duplicates, then position and
rotate them at the tails of

some of your meteorites.

Take a step back for a
moment, to look at the
overall effect. The impression
isn't quite right - the
atmosphere's too bright and
all the composited elements

need to gel better. A good
trick is to add a 'Wash' layer,
much like a watercolour wash.
Open the city image again and
sample two colours from it - a
light orange and pale mauve.

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Back in your
comp, create a
new layer uppermost,
and use the Gradient
tool to fill it with a
vertical gradient,
using the mauve
colour at the top. Load

the Bridge layer as a
selection, and create a
layer mask for the
Wash layer to mask
out the bridge from
the wash, which is
already quite orange.

Change the Wash
layer's blending
mode to Colour and
reduce the opacity.
You can see
immediately that the
different elements
now look more like
they belong together.

You may want to
adjust the
Hue/Saturation
Adjustment layer for
the wave, and maybe
darken the Bridge
layer slightly - but
otherwise, it's looking
good.

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