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Compositing Fashion Shoot Part 2

Lesson 12 from: Commercial Photography: From Start to Finish

Joel Grimes

Compositing Fashion Shoot Part 2

Lesson 12 from: Commercial Photography: From Start to Finish

Joel Grimes

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Lesson Info

12. Compositing Fashion Shoot Part 2

Next Lesson: Recap with Q&A

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Ten Things That Spell Disaster for a Photographer Part 1

25:08
2

Ten Things That Spell Disaster for a Photographer Part 2

30:44
3

Ten Things You Need to Know about Branding

31:12
4

Shoot: One Side Light Beauty Shot Part 1

26:25
5

Shoot: One Side Light Beauty Shot Part 2

19:20
6

Shoot: One Overhead Light Headshot

14:06
7

Shoot: Edgy Three Light Setup Part 1

26:21

Lesson Info

Compositing Fashion Shoot Part 2

Let's go over here and here's my death valley run so let's go pick it up I'm gonna do my move tool which is just the I'm gonna pick her up come over here and I'm gonna drop it right in here. Okay? Different source. I must have shot this a destination pro photo I do everything now adobe rgb uh let's say don't show again because I'm not really worried about it and here we have our gal in the death valley all right, so we noticed that that my light source my main light source is coming from the right so I have a choice I can flip her or flick the background if I flipped her so we go uh command tea and then hold down the right click and say flip horizontal now she's looking more like the source of the day we don't have a light go off there you know what this is? This is our cross light did not crazy I just picked it up. I didn't even think about it so I only have one light source on here. So this is good because now I know that I am I have to have the light source going in the direction th...

at the light is on her have to now if I say I really like the way it was before silas commands e here come on didn't like that let's go here now do command z I can flip the background so let's do this um you can see I added a sky cheater cheater I don't care I'm building drama right and so what I might do here is take a sip it'll let me do this command thi no it's gonna have to I'm gonna have to go and duplicate this now good to command tea and flip the lips flip the back round I'm going too fast here flip horizontal now my life source is coming from here I actually like this because I kind of got used to her this way right ok so um well joe will take that one out I'll just dump that we don't need that okay so now let's take a look the headdress is a hard one because there's so much hyped on her so at this point it's a little bit tough to sell the fake and I got a horizontal the horizontal the background line of the mountains right kind of through their eyes I don't like that so I have to do a little cheating here and let's do this um let's see if it'll do this for me gonna pick these up no I won't do that just go and make a stamp okay there we go now I can get rid of those and it's all one layer but what I'm gonna do is I'm going to stretch the background down a bit member cliff we talked about this so I'm gonna command tea and I'm gonna pull the background down and actually what I should have done is let let's uh forget that let's put her make her in here first and then do it okay so I'll go back command tea and I'm gonna pull it down a little bit and I'm I'm actually stretching my pixels not good I mean in this scenario I'm going first simplicity of sake I'm gonna kind of just make sure that um I'm gonna get away with it but I don't want you want to go this far this is a little bit too much what I might do is is actually here let's try it I might do this okay let me do it this way we hit this this is a good place to show this canvas eyes I'm going to make the canvas size thirty four three hundred thirty four say ok up wrong way go back campus eyes we're going to go height so let's go to um let's go to twenty and there's a lot that we don't make not need it and I didn't see I'm going to fast canvas size we hit this button twenty this going just bring out the top all right now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna on ly stretch the sky for second so this helps me at least preserve a little bit of my, uh megapixels on the bottom here command t stretched the sky a little bit okay, now I say okay d select now I go back I'm going to crop this out now I go back who there's a line on there that's all my mask will fix that in a minute now go back command tea and draw and see how I have a little bit less stretch on the bottom you I say what's the difference but I don't want her eyes on the horizon so that just above the horizon will work for me so I say okay and then I'm going to take my mask we're going to fix it so let's say I don't want that much sky above her so let's just do let's come down about actually about where that line is anyways that's about what I want okay, so let's do this now let's look at this mask not a very good mass we have some serious problems along here. Um so couple things to dio number one this is weir the hair is coming along here it's really, really pixelated has picked up kind of a greyish cast so we gotta fix that um and it looks like pretty much everywhere there's that issue so it's going it's easier to do this with black but we're going to click on the image itself I'm going to go to my brush I'm going to pick up the color of somewhere in the hair first so let's go over here in my little option old let's pick up that color right there and I'm going to set my blending mode to overlay we're going to set the capacity to about fifty percent and the float about fifty percent some around there forty fifty whatever and let's see what we can do here we're going to come along here and we're going to just build up a little bit of density in this hair teo sell the fake and you can also change look out picks up the hair alone here you can change the color as you go here so we're gonna come along here now we're gonna go to white and now we clean this up and let me go back to my basic um gole sell the fake that's it don't overdo it does that make sense don't get in there and overdo it just enough to sell the fake let's go back to another color here come along here this may not work this one is a really tough one here let's go to a darker color and see what it does here it's gonna hopefully no it's got that that's a tough one will clean that up in a minute so let's go back to its trying to but it's not I'm gonna build it up a little bit thicker here see what happens now it's not so um that will solve in a minute here let's go back to these feathers in the mid mid range is gonna be your hardest color to saul so I'll show you how to do that in a minute so we're still on overlay sometimes I mean let's just try multiply sometimes multiply all work too no it's not all right it's go backto overlay and let's pick up anything else that looks pretty good those look pretty good we're going to clean it up so to clean it up from here what I normally dio is I use an embrace of eraser brush so I'm gonna pick their razor brush up and it's that sixty sixty so then what's it maybe a little too much let's go back down and I just want to slowly thin out this area here what's my goal cellophane my goal is not that you go in here with a magnifying glass and literally tear this thing apart so see I'm doing this I'm just cleaning up a little bit of that fogging that happened along here just enough so that I can so am I sometimes I clone things and stamp him and put him in there you could get a brush by the way a brush that um can create like hair and lines and stuff and I'll do that too a lot clean up things that way so here we come along here look what look how this goes again this is not perfect but my goal is that when you look at this you don't even notice it you're not your eye doesn't go in here and go oh he took a break a racer brush to the whole thing so we're cleaning that up clean this up and this little bit fogged they're fogged here and I can actually take this brush here the eraser brush and has lines and I could go in there and just clean up um did you like that sound effect um but you get what I'm saying this will take a lot more time but I'm giving you the basics of what what I do and I think when we get done here you're not gonna really see this I really don't think you will be your eyeball is going to go in here and say uh joel didn't do a very good cut out but I would take that racer brush with lines and just clean up those but let's go back down here we didn't do this so let's go back to our image go back to my brush, click on the color and let's just fix this little area right here I think we're good to go now we got some jagan this along here no worries we click on the mask I take and get awful overlay believe me, I've done this many times and been on over late nothing happens amount of black brush I want my hardness to be at about seventy five percent somewhere around there now I can take and clean up this edge I'll show you there's two ways to do it but I'm going to show you and I got my black brush one hundred percent flow hundred percent capacity I'm on the mask watch what happens I clicked down here get the shift key and I go click click and I just clean up that edge lips that didn't go very well let's try to get here right here I'd probably blow this up a little bit more but basically what I want to do is I want to come around here a little smaller and I just want and watch how I do this circle but you know what? I'm on the I'm on that unit breathe brushed presets you have to be on the straight brush, not the tapered I think that was my problem let's go back here make sure it's set at seventy five I was on a tape of brush and I kept doing this so let's try to get here there we go I'm glad that happened because now when it happens to you, you'll know it has to be on the straight brush so you could get a little bit of a corner here come back and just kind of clean it up there's a little bit of indent right there but I'm not done yet I'm gonna show you show you how to smooth at up to so we're gonna go here clean that up and let's go back down here let me show you what I could do with the overall global I'm on the mask I take my um lasso tool I go right where the hair is come back around here I'm going to smooth and shrink this mask I apply filter blur gazi and blur let's do a two radius now I've just applied to radios to that edge I'm gonna want washes and this is where I love people when they when I teach workshops they go on all night I'm gonna apply a levels so command el and I'm gonna pull it to the right and watch this line here boo she clean up so I'm doing it after the fact if I did it in the refine mask it shrinks all the feathers and everything all the hair this way I can pick where now d select and I'm done with that I can pick where I want this that to apply so I say sorry let's go back to the to the mask pick up here to here I'm go to filter I've already done my gaussian blur right command f command l shrink it boom is cleaned up to mandy it's off. I don't want to do it on the feathers. I don't want to play that shrinking on the feathers so let's, go down that's looking pretty darn good for me at the stage. Now I do this on almost every single image that I do in a knockout. What? I'm going to show you next and this is part of what helps me sell the fake remember I said I selling the fake is is the goal to make it look like she was standing out there and the knockout is a part of that. But it's not the most important watch what I'm gonna do next to help sell the fake I'm gonna create below between her in the background a blank layer shift command and just leave it normal and I'm gonna take my brush on white we're going to take about a thirty percent, um, capacity and about the same with the flow. We're going to make it really soft so let's go to the softest brush and I'm gonna make it big here ago, rose. Now watch what happens when I do this literally it makes her look like she's there, ready I'm going start clicking behind her, I'm now putting atmosphere between her in the background make sure that I don't overdo it but I can overdo it because I can change it later I can feather it later so I'm going to keep building up here a little bit case I've kind of overdone it now and okay, so now I'm gonna go get out of that brush and I'm gonna add a little bit of noise back here so I'm gonna go because it looks to smooth right filter noise and for background noise somewhere around twelve so let's blow it up let's see if we can see it see how much grain that is that's too much let's go to twelve twelve about right that gives me a little bit of bite like it's really atmosphere so we say ok now go back and I can feather the opacity so let's take it zero and I can start to fill it in and tow where you know it looks like she's there she's I mean it's a background right it's like she's in position now she's contrast wise she's a little off right? So let's give her a little bit of contrast to match the background so I'm gonna add adjustment layer uh levels and I'm going to do a clipping path that uh that gives me the background tied to the necessary the adjustment late layer tied to her and not the background so to do that I take my um, option all button. And as I moved my little hand in between here and I click, you'll see the little box with a little right and arrow and I go click that clips it. So whatever I do to the levels now only applies to her. Very important. So let's build a little contrast. Who? Oop. Oop! Gotta be careful that I don't overdo it here, but I wanted to match the background. So how do I know that I let my intuition be my guide? Sometimes I go to black let's, see if it'll let me go to black here. Now we go back to tab let's, go back to, um here. And I want to sell the fact that she's sitting in that desert that looks pretty good to me. If in fact, I've now blown out the feathers. What do I have over here? I'm ask. All I gotta do is go over to my my black brush and let's go back to, uh, gray here. And I want let's say fifty, fifty here and let's. Zoom this and a little bit to make my brush smaller. Now I can block what I just did on that top of the feathers. See what a mass does gives me all these freedoms to go and find tune things now I'm not sold yet I think you know what she's a little warmer than the background or the background a little warmer cooler all these things now I'm colorblind so I have to think in terms of warm, cool and photo shop and cs for whatever they came up with a filter her photo filter pack the single greatest thing that ever happened for me in photo shop because now guess what? It has names warming filter and so what I might do is take let's warm up the background a little bit so we can take this filter down below and we know that it's that kills it right still too much but let's go like maybe six pixels five pixels first percent that warms the background a little bit, but I would say in a way I almost like that coolness and so what I could do is go up here, we'd do a clipping path and we actually go and cool down her slightly and three or four pixels cools her down just enough to feel like she's sitting in there that makes sense and let's now think about the position of her I might bring her over a little bit to see that that was lined up with that line right there see right there that wasn't good for me so now put that little headdress part into the shape of the shadow there maybe offset her a little bit. I like that little bump there's a bump there session between the two there um in terms of size will see we could maybe bring her down lips just a little bit so that now she's in the headdress is sitting in there there's a line along here see that line that's the mass all I gotta do is come over here go to black brush hundred percent and just was paint well the sea brush normal hundred percent capture on let's get small and boot is gone clean it all out make sure that there's no one lines that are showing up from that mask. Okay? So not bad not bad, not bad not bad list just do another thing we might want to add a a little bit of a vineyard just it'll make her pop a little bit from the background so we're going to go to, um a levels we're going to go to my grady in't tool and we're going to go to the circular when which is I let go it tells me it's the radio grady in't and I'm gonna pull from I'm not quite from her face but may be right about here pull out and now I can take and then yet this just a little bit see I don't want to go too far but it makes it kind of sucks you into her just a little bit more um what else to dio I don't know I'm liking it oh let's do this let me just go down I always go small let's take a look at that grady it or that I don't know if that really did much because I think it's already been done I did it on the original one maybe then almost didn't quite but you know how I did now that's how I do my been yet so let's get rid of that let's say that didn't didn't work um background value looks pretty good looks like u she's out there in the desert uh maybe you see that little bit of the fogging that we did with here that kind of bothers me right there so all I have to do is go over to my uh erase your tool it's gonna make it big enough and I'm just gonna take that out that helps that helps a little bit because it looked like there was too much there so what else is my go to um take a look here I think it looks pretty good I mean what I call this a portfolio piece I don't know I think you know that I like that I like the cross like we did on this one which was one light and it kind of fits with the desert now did wasn't the edgy like I normally do I might fix the clouds a little bit so that they kind of maybe go off the head dress a little bit who knows something that might work a bit better here but there you go there's my process on that in terms of oh, I wouldn't say there's one other thing I do on occasion and may not be on this necessarily but I'll show it to you because we'll probably do it tomorrow when we do our athlete but I'm gonna show it to you now and that is going to another stamp so shift all the option command e hopes I didn't this is sometimes happens so I'm going to make a a blank layer and now do it shift command option e I made a stamp now then apply a nick color affects pro and I'm gonna give it just a little bit of a grungy but punch to it now on athlete I would doom or like with vincent I did it quite a bit within set so it defaults to detail extractor um which is what I want and twenty six percent contrast is at forty saturation zero and that's kind of how I leave it that's pretty grungy not quite but I'm going to show you I'm going to say okay because I'm gonna feather the opacity to give me how much grunge and want in the final and I can also have a mask like and take a little bit of the grunge out of her face but leave the grunge in the background so let's see what happens here and this is a nick plug in obviously so we'll see what it did it actually kind of cells the fake now I've heard of photography our retailers tell me this that when they could do all the retouching on a composite, then apply a little bit of grain or a defect like this, it kind of flattens everything and then it kind of gives you the old yes, it sells the fake does that make sense? So I used green a lot I use this a lot and actually let me pull this up there's probably a little bit too much on her face, so all I do is apply a mask so we're appear details tractor I've got a mask right here think there's my mask and all I do is take a brush at black because if the white is is in position let's take the opacity down to about fifty fifty, fifty percent capacity fifty percent flow and now what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna pull back a little bit of this grunge on her face so let's smooth out her face smooth down here and clean that up just a little bit her arm but I like it on the feathers. I don't like it there. Oh too much on that. Go back on that. Well, I could just go x, we'll bring it back so now and I didn't do the best job upon this little section up here a member of soldiers and fix that but really that's going to be with my razor brush with a, uh, brush that has sharp lines to where I can literally cut in there and just make the feathers show up. But that is. And any questions anybody call if you've got a question? Yeah, do you have a question to actually, normally you shoot your backgrounds? That twenty four millimeter was that one shot in twenty four sixteen. Sixteen was somebody it's? Not always you can because that when we shot whereabouts sixty years, fifty three when you shot her yes. So eso you still consulted by this kind of the way you adjusted the the background and you sort of resize it to make it fit? I mean, I know we talked about that past workshop that you try to keep it at twenty four and shoot a twenty for the subject. The thing is, when you put a person in the background there's a marriage that happens or does not happen what millimeter you use, what, how high off the ground you use, all that stuff gets thrown out the window if it doesn't work, so the marriage has to work. If it doesn't work, I don't care if you say, oh, I shot her at twenty four millimeter, I shot the background twin formality meter, my tribe. I was exact, same height, and it doesn't work. So here's, what I would say, you get all these backgrounds, you come back, I shot all sorts angles of the death valley, and then I try to make find the marriage, and I don't think about that was sixteen millimeter, that was, you know, twenty four millimeter. I don't think about that. I just drop it end as a worker does not work, buy me. Pulling it down helped a little bit because, well, part of it was on the horizon.

Ratings and Reviews

OneMoreArtist
 

Joel Grimes reflects the true meaning of a passionate modern artist. Seamlessly blending his old school film techniques in todays ever-changing digital world with such amazing realistic results. Not only in his own body of work, but achieving the same outcome while teaching LIVE, even when things don’t always run smoothly, much like the real world. Thank you Joel for sharing your hard work and talents, your struggles, most importantly, your honest open teaching style with such detail in every segment. Much appreciate CREATIVE LIVE for keeping it real with good talent, on and off screen showcasing common humanity in us all. Indeed, a revolutionary company. Manny DaCunha.

a Creativelive Student
 

As an editorial and photographic professional it's refreshing to find new cerebral information that goes beyond simple instruction. It was motivating to see Joel, a highly respected professional who is successful in "real-life", display his thought process, points to be successful, and insights into his art. When you have been in the industry, working full time, you need those moments to relax, visualize and re-energize so you can look at projects with a renewed vision and passion. Joel and his Commercial Photography course did that and more for me. If my schedule allowed, I would certainly join Joel at one of his workshops. Only thing better than this CreativeLive would be attending live. Thank you Joel.

Student Work

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