The Falconer and Owl Composite – Part 2

Now that you know how I shot the assignment in The Falconer and Owl Composite – Part 1. Lets take an in-depth look at how the composite was created in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

© Stuart Little 2009

Photoshop

Now, before I guide you through what I did to achieve the final composite, I want to mention a couple of things. Firstly, when you are doing a cut-out, consider what you are photographing and also what the final background is going to be? What I mean by that is if like this shot you are going to cut the subject away from a dark background then please don’t go and place your subject on a pure white background. No extraction technique or software in the world is going to help you blend those into something thats photo-realistic.

However, cutting a subject out of a white background and placing it into a dark background can be more forgiving, but only if its correctly lit in the first place. But you will still have to manage your edge pixels correctly. It’s not that you can’t do either way, its just that you have to make sure your final background is empathetic towards your subject. So try consider the final image before clicking the shutter or as in this case make the background fit the image.

Note – How I chose a cloud background that had a hotspot for separation, but also dark clouds towards the edge?

Now, there is a third scenario to all of this extraction stuff and this is more a tip for pro’s and advanced am’s. Backlighting, rim lighting or hair lighting your subject will give you a huge amount of compositing flexibility because you are controlling the pixel edge of your subject. I will be demonstrating this more fully in the weeks to come when we start to do chroma-key work but for now, lets cut this image up!

Step 1 – Open your image and make a copy of the background (Command+J)MAC or (Control+J)PC and save the document under a new name and as a PSD.

© Stuart Little 2009

I am a lazy S.O.B. therefore I dug out the cloud image I shot for the Totally Dynamic HDR and borrowed one of the out-takes above as it had a good hotspot, plus it was shot on the Canon EOS5D Mk2 and it was a really nice big file… The bigger the better

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 2 – Click on the background and then create a new group for your cloud layers (Command+G)MAC or (Control+G)PC so that they are between your background and background copy layer named (Owl & Falconer). Then drag and drop the clouds into the canvas with the move tool (V). If needed move the layers about until you have similar configuration to the screen shot above.

Note – In this composite the background image is not needed, so I filled it with black but thats a personal preference rather than a technique.

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 3 – Copy the clouds layer (Command+J)MAC or (Control+J)PC and rename the layer “Clouds lens blurred”.

Step 4 – Filter>Blur>Lens Blur – and dial in the settings from the screen shot above or what suits your image. Ok that, and set the opacity to 40% on the “Clouds lens blurred” layer.

The reason I have blurred the copy layer a little is to help with the depth within the image and give a sense of distance between the subject and the clouds. Once again it helps sell the idea of photo-realism!

Step 5 – Add a curves adjustment layer and pull the curve line down a little to darken the image.

Now we are going to get moody!

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 6 – Press (D) then (X) to reset the foreground and background colours, then click on a gradient map adjustment layer from the layers or adjustments panel. Then set the blend mode to “Multiply”. This will darken the clouds down to a really nice twilight look.

Steps 4, 5, 6, need to all take place inside the “Cloud Group” (as above) to keep things neat and tidy for later on.

Step 7 – Click on the “Owl & Falconer” layer and then go to the channels panel.

We are now going to the opposite of what we did in the previous screencast. Oh YES! we are going to go to the light side of the force, in order to select all the dark matter. Honest we are…

© Stuart Little 2009

Now do you see why its important to light a shot with rim or backlighting? Not yet… ok read on…

Step 8 – Image>Calculations – Set both channels to red, because its the channel with the most white and set the blending to screen which makes it all that little bit more white! Finally set the result to a “New Channel”.

Step 9 – At this point I am going to refer you once again to the “Creating a White Background with a Channel Mask” screen-cast, because thats what you need to do achieve a good alpha channel mask.

© Stuart Little 2009

Once your done you should end up with a pretty good channel mask and if not, then you will need to fine tune things with a brush (B) and a tub of black & white pixel paint! (D).

© Stuart Little 2009

You will notice I have actually brought some of the black background back in around the owl so that blend between the subject and the cloud group works better. This is why you need to consider the either using a background that works with your subject or light the subject so that it can be used in a number of backgrounds more easily.

© Stuart Little 2009

The light is now coming from behind Jamie in the background as it was in the original shot using the SB24 Strobe. This is what helps sell the illusion of reality as I am making both the foreground and background blend better together, because the direction of light is roughly the same. The hot spot needs to be well, hotter, but we will sort that out in a little while… Now, do you see why the light so important? Good, lets get some movement into the birdie’s wings.

But, just before we do that, its at this point that a lot of inexperienced Photoshop users pat themselves on the back and say job well done! Ok, well its not bad, but the don’t you think the colour needs blending as well? Direction of light and as well as the colour of the light matters… 12 years ago you would have thought I was talking of black magic, but nowadays we all alter the colour temperature of our images all the time.

Why not do it with your composites also? So whilst I talk you through the blurring of “hooters” wings, consider how I am going to get the colours balancing together!

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 10 – Make a copy of your subject layer (Command+J)MAC or (Control+J)PC, in my case thats the one named “Owl & Falconer” and now comes the tricky bit. Click and drag the alpha channel of copied layer into the trash can icon. It will ask you whether you wish to delete or apply the mask. You are going to want to apply it. Then name the layer “Motion Blur” to remind you that the motion blur filter will be applied here.

This will leave a permanent transparent area around the subject as we no longer require the masked area for this part of the technique.

Step 11 – Make a copy of your “Motion Blur” (Command+J)MAC or (Control+J)PC and call it “Radial Blur” again for the same reason.

Step 12 – Shift click both layers to highlight them and then (Command+G)MAC or (Control+G)PC them both into a group calling it “Wing Blurs” or whatever suits you.

Step 13 – Apply layer masks to both the “Motion Blur” & “Radial Blur” layers in preparation for the 2 different blurs to be applied.

© Stuart Little 2009

At this stage your layers should look something similar to screen shot above. Now, we need to apply two different blurs to get a sense of motion in the owl wings.

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 14 – Switch off the visibility of the “Radial Blur” Layer and click on the thumbnail of the “Motion Blur” layer then go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. The key thing here is to get the angle right but the actual blur is to taste, so don’t take 45 pixels as a hard and fast rule its more about the feeling of the movement than anything else.

Step 15 – Once you have applied the filter use your move tool (V) to offset the blur lower left so that it trails out a little more from the wing. This is to replicate rear or 2nd curtain sync created with a speedlight. Then all you have to do is mask the majority of the effect away from the subject and the bird so that its just the wing area that has the movement.

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 16 – Switch the visibility of the “Radial Blur” layer back on and click on the layer to activate it. Now apply the 2nd wing blur layer with a 10 pixel radial blur using the settings in the screen shots above. Your only going to need the very tip of the wing for this effect, so click on the layer mask of ‘Radial Blur” and (Command+I)MAC or (Control+I)PC to inverse the mask. Then use a brush (B) at 50% opacity and the color (white) to bring back a little of the radial blur effect at the tip.

© Stuart Little 2009

That takes care of the wing blur and yes I could have done that in camera but I get even more control this way. Next we are going to add the lighting effects which are very much to taste, so I will tell you where I got the brushes used in the composite and describe the layer style settings. The rest is up to you! as it really is personal taste as to how and where you place lighting effects and what works for one image may not work for another image.

Step 17 – Add the “light streaks” (as I like to call them). Ok, so these are a little unique to this composite, so I thought I would guide you through how I created them and let experiment with your own images.

Now, in times gone by I would have taken you through a whole exercise on how to make brushes for yourself. That however is for another day, today we are going to download the required brushes from myphotoshopbrushes.com “Why reinvent the wheel” is what I say… A big shout out to Rubina119 for making a cool little set of Photoshop brushes that are up for some light fantastic use!

© Stuart Little 2009

Once I created the light streaks, I changed the blend modes of the layers to things like screen and vivid light to get a reaction with the pixels underneath. The likes of screen brightened them and where is vivid light not only turned the brightness up but affected the colour as well. Once again this up for experimentation as there is no right or wrong apart from leaving the light streaks in normal blend mode.

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 18 – I dropped the opacity of each layer to 80%-90%, so that the light was more transparent. Then finishing touch was to add an orange glow to match how I was going to match the colour temperature of the composite. The secret to that is to increase the range of the glow more than any other settings but you can check them out in the screen shot. (above)

© Stuart Little 2009

Note – The “Light Streak” layer without glow was created using motion blur and coloured orange rather then setup with an orange glow and the reason for this is you don’t want to make all the different light effects to uniform. Its better to mixed it up a little so that it keeps the composite believable although still a piece of fantasy.

Step 19 – I created a new layer (Shift+Command+N)MAC or (Shift+Control+N)PC and named it “Burn” then set the blend mode to (Soft Light). This allowed me to use a brush with 20% and 40% flow with Black to burn in details around my subject and help separate him from the light effects. I also burned in the the shadows on the green ghillie shirt.

Step 20 – Add a photo filter adjustment layer and switch from filter to color in the dialog box, this makes the colour temperature much warmer.

Step 21 – Add a hue/saturation adjustment layer and set the saturation to 25 whilst shifting the hue to 26 so that we are once again more in the yellow end of the temperature scale. By setting the blend mode to overlay, this particular layer is going to help our shadow colour and also has to be applied sparingly, so the opacity was lowered to 54%.

I then moved my “burn layer” above these two adjustment layers to that it blended into them rather than below them.

Step 22 – I added a vibrance layer to mainly increase the saturation of the “ghillie shirt” but still retain the tonal detail in the composite.

© Stuart Little 2009

At this point we are coming to end the of the composite so remember to save your work, but before we finish up the last few layers, we need to blend in the sky colour and also bring back some detail lost in the shadows.

© Stuart Little 2009

Step 23 – Add an Gradient Fill adjustment layer and set the scale to 110%, style to Radial, and the angle to 90 degrees. Then click on the default gradient to edit it. Now at this point I could go into a long spiel about how to create a gradient but thats for another day.

Today I am just going to let you download and play with it. Download Gradient

The main concept of this gradient fill is that is serves 3 purposes. The cream end to the left, brightens my shadows. The brown blend in the middle, colours my clouds. Then finally the dark brown colour to the right, gives me a bit of a vignette in the bottom left corner, which replicates the fall off you get from a grid spot on your strobe. So download and have a play with it on your own composites. You may need to alter the colours slightly to get it to suit your own composite. Pretty Cool!

Finally

We are on the final straight and heading for home and the next step is the one that brings it all together. But before we get to that you may have noticed the white blob of light in the middle. I have not mentioned it until now because it only got added at this point in the exercise as I was creating the overall effect. Its just a white ellipse thats been blurred with Gaussian Blur and the placed behind the subjects head for separation. I used “Linear Dodge” as the blending mode to lighten it up and let it interact with the other light effects.

I digress, but the composite is created first then I go back through it and break it down for the article. I wanted to make sure though the timeline of when I created everything was kept intact. Now back to Step 24.

Step 24 – Select the upper most laser in your stack of layers. Then use the following shortcut – (Shift+Option+Command+E)MAC or (Shift+Alt+Control+E)PC and this will merge all the layers into a new composite layer.

Step 25 – Filter>Noise>Add Noise – 4% Amount, Gaussian, Monochromatic.

Why are you adding noise? Well this is an amazing way to blend all your edges and masks into the one image so that they have the same digital grain or noise pattern and it helps sell your composite as photo-realistic! Put this one in your box of tricks because its your go to technique for any composite.

Note – the amount of noise is dependent on how different the elements of your composite look. I needed 4% to tame my image but you may only need as little as 2% so used it sparingly.

Step 26 – Select the “noise blend” layer and copy it. (Command+J)MAC or (Control+J)PC. Then name the new composite layer “Dodge & Burn with Colour”.

© Stuart Little 2009

In this final layer, you can use the Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools to darken the shadows, brighten the light streaks, and saturate the shirt and glove etc to taste. Then I finally applied a little – Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask at 65%, 0.3, 0 Threshold to the layer and its done.

© Stuart Little 2009

Now, I have done this in a step by step fashion but because its all unique to this particular composite, so there is no real point in following this like a recipe. Its more of a guide where you can dip into different techniques to suit your own work. However, who am I to hold you back! So feel free to have a crack at it, if you have a similar image you can work on. Enjoy!

Related screencasts & articles.

• The Falconer and Owl Composite - Part 1 Mon 21 Sep 2009
• 4 Photo Sequence Canvas Print Mon 14 Sep 2009
• Creatively Creating Mood with Lightroom Mon 11 Jan 2010