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Editing Dollhouse Shoot Part 2

Lesson 36 from: Fine Art Compositing

Brooke Shaden

Editing Dollhouse Shoot Part 2

Lesson 36 from: Fine Art Compositing

Brooke Shaden

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Lesson Info

36. Editing Dollhouse Shoot Part 2

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Class Introduction

13:30
2

Why Composite ?

15:25
3

Logic Checklist

24:20
4

What Not To Do When Compositing

08:46
5

Shooting for Composite

08:57
6

Changing Backgrounds and Light

28:12
7

Shoot: Simple Swaps Part 1

29:22

Lesson Info

Editing Dollhouse Shoot Part 2

okay so we're going to find the images that we need to make this more believable okay so we're going into the shots that we took earlier okay and before I changed my angle I think these were our good hair shops so let's open that up we'll start with this side okay now for the sake of time we might not add the hair on right now but I'm going to do it really quickly just on one side so we can see if it's going to work the same as the rest okay so going to copy that and I'm going to paste that and now we need to adjust the proportion unless we want to give her like a crazy beard or something way don't so free transform is command or control t shrink that down I think maybe just slightly more to about there and say ok now we can adjust the angle of it we can transform that again to maybe do that to it or do that to it or whatever we think it needs I can see her cheek there so I can kind of match that up which is good and let's go in and see how this is going to work for us with our backgro...

und eraser tool going to make it a little bit bigger because we had it smaller to go in the nooks and crannies and I'm going to start to erase okay good good good good enough and now I'm going to get in there with a smaller tool that looks creepy and I'm going to get in the edges here oh see now I'm erasing too much so this is where it's going to get a little bit tricky and what I want to do is make it a little bit bigger and we can always change the tolerance again so we could take the tolerance down to five and then it's going to a race almost nothing which we don't want to do we could take the tolerance up to fifty five and then it's going to raise too much just like the problem we had before so playing with tolerance I think is the most productive thing to do when you're on this background eraser tool to see how that's going to work for you and if it's going to blend and all of that fun stuff so I can keep working with this but at this point I'm just going to do what we did before which is to go in and change the white to be a little bit more blue in a little bit darker because we're going to run out of time if I don't do that so replaced color and I'm going to slit just I guess this looks pretty white down here and we'll see how that goes there we go just darkening those edges I think that looks pretty good okay now I need to blend in so I'm going to create a layer mask with my brush tool hundred percent opacity and we'll get rid of that there now I don't really want this hair covering the book because that doesn't make sense perspective wise so I'll just get rid of that on top of the book and now I can talk about that on enough we can see what we're doing okay looks good we covered up my perfect girl from before shucks ok when is there mail all right got a girl in the water I'm very grateful for that and now we need some book pages so let's go find the book pages let's see going into bridge and going to find the book all right I think this was the first good yep good shot that we took their so open that up open image and remember it's going to be way too big so I know that already and I'm going to fix that now this is actually on black so if I wanted to use the background a racer tool I could probably do that pretty easily right now but I think that I would rather just lighten the block a little bit and make it a little bit more blue that way it'll just sit right in the water and then I can erase it very gently so let's see may we want giant book pages but probably not so we'll free transform that down and I know that this has to actually match that book so I need to actually take a look at that to see that it's going to be that roughly the same size let me see I'm not going to actually rotate this but I'm just going to turn it to see if it matches the height of the book that I'm going to shrink it down to match about their we'll turn that back around and say ok so I'm going to set this down in the water perhaps just there and let's see oh I'm going to put it over here actually there's a little wave coming up there and I remember how I said I wanted the wave to come underneath it now let's take a look again with replace color replaced color is like my best friend in photo shop I love using it because it allows me to do so many things with it's amazing what you can do with you saturation and lightness I I just think it's one of the best things ever so hugh now we're gonna have to play with the slider and see if this is even going to make any difference uh uh uh sorry for making lots of noises okay so it's not really working okay the replace color not so much so because of that I'll just do it manually so I don't need to do replace color because that's like kind of a luxury tool where is just going to do it all at once for you so instead I'll just take my lasso tool and I'm going to section off this book kind of roughly but just going right around the edges I'm going to section off the book because I'm going to then select in verse now when I select inverse I want to affect only the dark water all around it so well feather it just like we feather everything that looks pretty good ok and now right click and select in verse so now I can go into a curves adjustment liquor and with that curves adjustment layer I can go into blue and I can add some blue I'm on the wrong layer aren't I or is it just affecting everything cause we haven't pinned it I pinned it it's fine okay so now I can add blue if I want to add blue to the outside edges um I think that maybe there's a little bit too much red in there it's a little purple so I can go ahead and add some sigh into that that's going to blend so much better or we agreed okay so I'm going to make it a little bit darker again because I think now it'll match pretty well and now I can laywer mask on that book page so now I'm going to go at one hundred percent opacity racing's let me get rid of that harsh edge that was happening there and then we can go in at a much lower opacity now here we might need to erase completely because there was no shadow behind that book page in the background photo but around here we have a really good opportunity to just lower the opacity and get rid of some of the water from there I don't know if I go over that enough times and maybe we can get away with that just blending the shadow in but I'm not getting rid of is how the page actually looks in the water so we can see that it's actually touching the water in some places especially down here we can see it's entering the water I didn't affect that was coming in through there okay so I would probably blend that in just a little bit more but we're going to move on now to another book page we'll just do one more book page on and then we will go ahead and move on but I like that one a lot I like that one a lot don't take that one okay this was my favorite one because it just looked so sad so let's take let's go and take a lot of it and just see how the blending of the water goes with this little wave because I liked the wave so much copy it and paste it so now we'll do this process a little bit faster hey you hey you okay we're going to do that again so that it pops up on top of our curves adjustment layer there we go so now I'm going to put this wherever I think it needs to go control t or command tea to make it smaller I'm just going to now match it up with this page but the other thing to keep in mind is maybe you want it to be bigger if you want it in the foreground of the image instead of in the background or level with her so let's actually go back to making this a little bit bigger and then we can blur it so that it fits in the foreground of this picture a little bit better mm I think that would be a lovely spot for it so let's keep it there and now with that same process that we just did to blend it I am going tio section off the paper and then create a curbs adjustment layer to deal with the black part of the water but you can kind of see how it's so much better that we had blackwater rather than white water we would have had to cut every single thing out if we had had white water so I'm going to refine edge take that feather slider up just a little bit and say okay and then back into a curves adjustment layer so I'm going to make it I didn't select inverse did I guys always have my back okay so refined hedgerows are stepping back in history to when we did that refine edge now going to right click in select in verse and then create my curves adjustment layer pin it to the way or below and let's make it a little bit lighter a little bit bluer and a little bit less red okay kind of like that maybe a little bit green green maybe the only time I've ever in my life added green to a photo there we go right now I'm going tio create my layer mask my brush tool take that size up capacity all the way up and I'm going to start to blend okay no I've seen to get rid of the harsh line and then we can talk about what can stay in what can go I really love this little wave so I'm just going to erase it at a really low opacity that way I could just blend it a little bit better like that I'm gonna leave that wave in there let me take the size down and I'm just going teo make sure that isn't too dark in the background here especially through this area right in there where there was naturally a highlight I love that book change okay so I really enjoyed that book page I'm just going to go over this one last time right there so that blends okay I like that a lot but I need to see if the focus is an issue here so you can see how this is kind of in focus there was some motion blur and what not but this is out of focus so let's just click on the actual layer here and let's go into filter blur gaussian blur organise box blur and I don't really see much of a difference between those two okay no that's too much so let's take our radius down on that blur quite a bit I mean we don't need much of a blur here just a little little bit under two pixels I think does that look okay with the blur amount is a too much too little okay I'm going to type one point six because I'm a very precise person uh okay so we have a couple book pages in the water and I think they're actually a little bit too bright so I would probably take the brightness down on them a little bit if we're working with believability here and and just trying to make sure that everything is going to look perfect but for now we'll just leave that because there are more important things that we need to do which are the houses which is the thing that I think is not going to work so let's take a look going to find the first couple images let's try this one first okay well yeah we can get rid of the finger it's fine so let's take this image in open that up my heart's like fluttering like oh my gosh this is not good this is gonna be bad and let's go ahead and select it we'll get some of that reflection in there because it's really need to see it underwater which we might have to erase out but you know still fun to kind of pull it in and see how it looks copy that and paste I did it again and paste ok now we have to think about relative size houses are much bigger than humans yet the house is in the distance so this is not something that I can say you know I know because this this and this it's just something that we have to try out okay so I'm gonna zoom in I am going to shrink it a little bit so I want it to be quite in the distance shrink it like about there and now this water might not actually blend because we might have needed to get a different angle on this house so I might have needed to move my tripod up since it's in the distance it would sit down further in the water and that's just something that you know had I done a test of this before then I could have said that I would have said oh yeah obviously you just have to do a different angle but who the heck can know that kind of thing well maybe a lot of people wouldn't know that kind of thing I don't not sure but I definitely don't know that kind of thing so I'm going to go ahead and just drink that down maybe we'll start back here we'll put one back there so we don't know until we try let's go take a look at what has to happen in here definitely has to be blurred it because it's going way in the distance in the background and I have to cut so I'm going to start cutting first because I don't want to cut something that's blurred it becomes more difficult to a race against something that's really difficult to see so let's go ahead with our layer mask with their brush tool and again I could I could try the background to race or tool here especially where it's white so if I wanted to do that then I could just sort of see how that's going to work but it's a little bit murky there's kind of a strange amount of contrast in some places in some areas s o I'm not going to do that instead I'm going to this really fast by choosing my lasso tool plugging a lasso tour and sectioning it off because all these little dips where the shingles are that becomes really difficult tio you know cut with a round brush so instead I'm going teo just do it like this all right so we've got that portion sectioned off now we can come over here and we'll just focus on this area first we'll probably just do this with one house because I want to get through a little bit more than this but let's see how this one house goes because there might not be any point in doing any more than that so I'm going to use my brush tool and I'm telling you if this doesn't work I'm gonna make it work like another time get on my lighter mask we'll just get rid of that so that I don't have to get in there with every little shingle I'm not into that I didn't quite get close enough here on the roof so I'll just redo that very quickly okay and then we'll do the other side of the house so I'm just feathering that one pixel because that was about what I did before I get rid of that same thing on the other side I still don't quite get enough and being bad with that yeah I'd rather cut into the house a little bit that not get enough this time and for the sake of time we're just going to cut the shingles off okay feather one pixel and brush tour and let's see about erasing their okay when you select it like that why do you not just do cut instead of it wait there's a tool it just cuts or do you mean with a brush um just to like select x to just cut what you've selected out oh I don't know I never thought about that I will consider that a future is there a thought about it okay so we have the house relatively cut out now and now we just need to go ahead and later mask around the edges here so I'm going to go with a soft fuzzy brush and we're just going to get rid of that so now it's a little bit bright through here so I'm just going to select this area just specifically where the reflection was and down through here and we're going to dark in that by refining edge feather slider up and I will now pinna curves adjustment layer to the house see if we can darken that down the real problem here is that it's quite yellow so it's fixed the yellow nous the opposite of yellow is blue so I can add some blue to that area and then also at the sai into that area then well hands blending a little bit better now least I feel a little bit better about that okay so there's the house it's not quite working I am well aware of that and that's the kind of thing that I'm just gonna have to play with a little bit later to see if it requires a reshoot or maybe um I could do something in a photo shop to play without a little bit leader this area specifically is not working I didn't blur in that might help hold on let me give me a second filter blur gaussian blur okay so I'm gonna take that radius up because that needs to be pretty blurry okay so now we've got a blurry house back there in the background this needs to be shaded a little bit better I think that's where a lot of the problem is coming from because where it's a little bit darker it blends really nicely obviously I would need to go in with the brush again because we have a little bit of the edge is blurring out where it was a little bit white on the edges or gray from the background but right in here is where I'd probably want to create a little bit of a shadow happening maybe just like this on there and I'm gonna leave the peek a little bit whiter because the sun would be hitting it a little bit more but I'm going to feather that we'll say forty pixels will do a nice big feather and now with my curves adjustment layer we'll see if we can't make that a little bit darker a little bit more shaded through that area add some blue to it just for the reflections on the color of the water is showing through on the house like that and then we'll back out of there so it could work we'll work on it a little bit but let me bring up one thing here that is kind of relevant at this stage which is playing with perspective of these objects so I'm going to click on the layer of the house here and when we go into ed it transform we can play with perspective within that dialogue box when we choose perspective that's when we can start to make the house appear like it's going away from the camera bring it toward the camera a little bit more pull it away from the camera this way a little bit more and so on so let's just see what that did so when I pull it back actually kind of like that a little bit more because it's allowing the house to kind of move into the wave behind it and sort of pull that perspective away as though the house really is moving into the distance so leave it like that and I'll continue to play with the houses in the water and things like that

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Logic Checklist
Must Have Shots
Favorite Photoshop Tools
Lighting Effects
Practice Files - Cutting out Hair from Background
Practice Files - Building a Dress
Practice Files - Swapping Hand
Practice Files - Levitation
Adorama Gear Guide

Ratings and Reviews

Logan Fox
 

I'm so thrilled to have come across this course and to have been introduced to Brooke Shaden. As a bit of background I do photography as a hobby, and always had an appetite to composite my work. It's only after watching this course that I can finally put a name to a craft that I love, that being 'fine art photography'. Through my own personal journey I've read various books, followed online tutorials both paid and free. When I came across this course I did hesitate. I wondered 'is it going to teach me anything new'... 'would the standard of the course be up to scratch'. Well, I can honestly say with hand on heart that this is by far is one of the best courses I've come across to date. As a solo photographer myself I've found it difficult at times to be both photographer and subject at the same time. From the outset what became clear was that Brooke is just like me in this respect which made the course so 'relevant' to what I do. Brooke shows throughout the course what can be achieved with a little planning and some creative approaches to situations that can be difficult to pull off when on your own. She is such a joy to watch and listen to, I loved her sense of humor and great how the audience were involved in some of the shoots. All I can say is, if you're in to photography and interested in compositing your work, you should give this a go, you wont regret it!

Totoo
 

I'd like to show my gratitude and gratefulness to Ms Shaden and other wonderful people at CreativeLIVE for sharing your vast knowledge without making a fuss. Not everybody has a super computer and a top-notch camera, not everyone has a studio to work in and not everyone needs to know everything as perfectly as some instructors and professionals do. I, for one, have gained so much insight and have been intrigued by Ms Shaden's present and past lessons, she makes the most difficult and surreal subjects unfold so easily and effortlessly. Ms Shaden has made me believe no matter where I be and no matter what i have, as long as i have a good story to tell, and the right vision, I should be able to handle it with a working camera and any version of Photoshop. Unlike many other instructors who kill us every 5 minutes to buy their flashes or gear and support this or that company and agency, Ms Shaden has spent the whole time teaching and teaching and teaching and I am sorry I cannot be there to thank you in person, but you, Ms Shaden, are awesome and nobody can unawesome you :)

lulgi
 

Brooke has a wonderful way of not only making it all look so easy, but actually be easy. In a plain and down to earth manner, she can make both beginner and advanced pro comfortable with the material covered in this class. From a simple starting point to a polished post-production finished work of art, she takes us on a relaxed and joyous journey. I am a former professional commercial photographer returning to the art after a 30 year absence. When I left, there was no such thing as digital photography. Now, to be able to embrace such concepts and techniques as taught by Brooke, without any difficulty to me, says that this course provides great value and time well spent. Well done Brooke! Well done Creative Live!

Student Work

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