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Compositing Additional Elements Part 2

Lesson 29 from: Adobe Photoshop Compositing: Essential Techniques

Aaron Nace

Compositing Additional Elements Part 2

Lesson 29 from: Adobe Photoshop Compositing: Essential Techniques

Aaron Nace

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Lesson Info

29. Compositing Additional Elements Part 2

Lesson Info

Compositing Additional Elements Part 2

with our sweat we're going to take care of this in a slightly different way we're going to this because it's just one color it's just the white we need to take care of I should be able to use a screen blending mode and then hit command or control l and make our darks just a little bit darker all right and now you can see this the amount of sweat and stuff like that it's visible and it's on its own layer and I'm gonna pop uh later masks you can also adjust the layer blend mode of multiple layers at the same time just shift click all those layers and then change them all to screen to save a little bit of time all right so command l is going to bring our levels up a little bit hit enter command l so you can see I've taken many different images with their background with our grass with our sweat and we're just popping these in and getting them ready really to work on our image and then once the ready then we can go ahead and start placing him in there and getting them to work for us yeah a...

re you using the adjustments that are attached to earlier to see space in the file I am yeah and also some of these times so you'll notice some of the time I'm creating a levels adjustment layer and then painting you know painting black you know on a layer mask or something like that some of the time I'm just using like just hitting command l the big difference from there is like if I think I could be wrong in that adjustment so for instance everything that is going on you know over here in my subject these normal levels adjustment layers that I'm using layer masks on right the reason is I might want to turn these offer on later like that it's really important that I get those right so if I need to make fine tune adjustments later I want to be able to go back and make those adjustments here with these guys if I just need to create a level adjustment layer to like make the blacks darker the blacks don't have to be exactly right this is just a little bit of layers sweat and I'm just knocking the blackout so I'm using it to kind of like save file space and just to make my image just a little bit more simple and so I won't have to I won't have to worry about you know each of these layers I don't want to have to create two adjustment layers it's it's going to really blow things up pretty quickly so good question and I am using later masks right now I could just use the eraser tools but I prefer to use later mess when I can't anyway all right getting that fuzz away and I pop to the sound of black layer I put a black layer behind it just to make it super quick and simple to see what I'm doing basically um this black layer that I created underneath the sweat layers is going to go away in just second but it's just allows me to see what this would actually look like on black so I know I can see like you know if I had a gn edge that looked like that I might not have seen that as clearly like this but putting that black layer makes it a lot more obvious that that's what's going on and if I were on if these layers were all on a multiply planning mode I would've put a light a white layer back there so actually really simple technique like similar to what we were actually doing you know in the photo shoot itself now we're applying to our to our image which is cool all right and these these layers by the way let's just go ahead and turn our um turn a cheque group what these layers with the sweat and things like that I'm actually totally okay reusing these if I need to like I'll probably put you know a couple here that's cool bit of sweat this stuff is it's the stuff that I think it was that making a really big difference in the image as the whole like when you actually take into account like all this you know who check out the spray and stuff like that right because that's the sort of stuff that would actually exist in the photo shoot we're just kind of like duplicating it or I'm all right where's the bowl you know what the bowl could have some of this spray kind of coming off a bit too so all right so kind of bringing this in there we go let's put this on top of the on top of the bowl there so you can see I'm actually I'm changing where my layers air place because I want everything to be super organized we've got a really complex composite here right and I want this all to be really well organized so I don't have I don't have to lose track or if I'm like you know I decide later on you know like oh you know what I totally need to reduce the amount of sweat that's on there I don't wanna have to go looking for it right that's that that's just no fun so keeping everything grouped just helped to make it easier and adding this little stuff you know like on the on the ball and whatnot um I find it just helps make makes the images look a little bit more realistic just even little stuff like that there we go it's going to go in my ball group because that's sweat that's going to go on my ball you know no matter where I move it see it looks like it's it's wet right like it looks like it had been kicked through some grass while I'm here by the way let's just go ahead and zoom in and the ball is a little bit too clear in my opinion like it's too too visible so I'm going to right click and apply this layer mask and we're just going to add a little bit of a blur to this ball oh this might be a really good chance for me to show you a new filter that stunning photo shop but before I do I'm gonna go ahead and save this all right let's go let's ask a question right before I get into this blur too because I know I've been going super fast pace on duh I think we're ready for a question all right it's all right just sprung that on you great hey I'm gop use baby yes I do use baby most of the time I'm using it for creative reasons not so much for color correction l a b mode I usually nude whenever I want okay kind of backup for anyone who's not too familiar with kelly b mode it basically separates your lightness which is l you're a channel in your b channel and the channel I believe is a mixture between like your magenta tze and your scions and the b channel I think is like your yellows and blues I have tto get in there and play with it to see the actual channels but one of the great benefits of using l a b mode is you can adjust color without affecting lightness at all like here if you use a levels or curves adjustment layer and you go in and even if you're just ing red and you're making like mohr or less red you actually do affect your lightness as well like you if you pull down your red channel your green channel and your blue channel it's going to make your layer darker so l a b mode what that's going to do is it just going to actually affect your colors and not affect lightness it all so I find when I'm editing a portrait and I want to add some like blues into the shadows but not affect the lightness the shadows at all lf the moon is a really good way to do that but generally not for this type of composite I'm usually using it when I wantto like ads and cool color and some cool style to an image cooling quickly for victrola could you repeat the shortcut that changes the blend mode please oh yeah total okay so that's going to be the and these the keyboard shortcut for the move tool okay so you want to make sure you're on your move tool and then you will hold down the shift key and you hit the plus in the minus and you can see I'm doing it on the soccer ball right now so plus there we go is changing the blend mode ford and minus is going to change the blend mode backwards and the reason you have to hit b to begin with is because sorry the this one for the move tool if you're in the brush tool it's actually going to change the blend mode of your brush which you can see on the very top of my screen right now good good question all these keyboard shortcuts that's what's gonna make you guys super fast in photo shop so I'm all for people learning them cool and then fever stock photo would like to know uh is there a way to find which player layer you are on or an affecting without turning on the the the eyeball on and off yeah there is actually if you're on your move tool it's a little bit easier if you don't use groups photoshopping my opinion hasn't resolved that really well just yet but if you're on your move tool and you hold down the control or command key and you click on something it's going to find whatever later you're clicking on so like I just clicked here and it's going to my background layer I can move that control click on my bowl and it's going to move my ball so you don't have to actually go through your layers however if you are let's say if you do have your background players control click on there it's going to select the entire group it's not going to like just that player which that might be in the setting somewhere but I haven't I haven't found out a way to just select that player that's good question but in a big composite like this if I wanted control click on my subject and move him around control click on my stadium move that around control click on my lights and move that around it's still pretty nice way to move things around so if you go up to the top left and you you know just the one to the right next to the yeah is that it is just his genius there's so many photo shop is so deep it's oded and I'm lucky that I've been working on the almost was looking for you yeah this's also that totally helps me out thanks that's awesome yes there is a way and I did not know it often okay so yes there there is a way to do it wow okay I learned something new thanks so much jim okay let's handsome blur the bowl to do this I'm going to use one of the new blur tools that's available it's available in the new photoshopped tc two thousand fourteen which I'm also excited about so I'm gonna click on this later seventeen which their ball I'm going to go to filter we're going to go to blur gallery and I'm going to go down too spindler all right so going down to spindler basically what this allows you do it's allows you to choose a center point for your your blur and allows you to add a spin to it which I'm not sure where the center of it is right now but I should be able to actually move that all right usually there's like a little visual indicator of where he actually you know what if I make this into a selection I'm sure it'll actually work better so controller command click on that we'll go to filter blur gallery and down the spindler and hopefully it'll just oh yeah you're right I don't want that do it alright d select um okay usually you label you're able to see we'll find it just a second there's ah bluer center basically all right is this it yep I think I found it all right there we go really cool so if you just click and move your your layer around it's going to move the center of the blur so if I wanted it to look like it was blurring out in that direction or in that direction I could and I can also bring my blower center actually to the ball and then I can change how much blur the ball is going to get so if I wanted it to look like it's blurring about the center like it's actually spinning you can use the spindler to do that lets it okay and see how it looks all right oh is it was still resolving okay I thought that was actually I was gonna look I was like that's not actually that nice that's up my blur a little bit and see how that looks that's cool what do you guys think so yeah there we go let's sit okay and it's going to leave the center of the ball less blurred and it's going to blur the edges a little bit more this is it works really well on like cars if you want to make it look like the wheels are spinning who works really well for that is a swell all right we're gonna be adding all kinds of cool blurs teo to these things you know what I'm going to put a little bit more of a blur on this we're gonna do with slight I think we're gonna do a slight motion blur so let's go to filter blur and then motion blur and these blurs air fun I'm probably doing this a little bit premature but we're already kind on this subject so I'm going to go ahead and do it but we're gonna be adding blurs basically to a bunch of different areas in our image there we go okay because this subject he needs a little bit of a blur right he's moving too fast in in this area not to have a little bit of a blur and that's going to make it look really cool all right so we were able to take basically totally still picture of our ball and add a little bit of a blur to it which I think it's really really cool and then depending on where we're actually going to wind up putting this um we're going to get a little bit of a glow on it as well all right assuming out and just kind of waiting on photo shop anytime you're working with this many layers photo shop it's gonna be like can eaten it up pretty hard alright bring our foreground players back this is shaping up to be an awesome image on okay let's look at our dirt because we've got a lot that we need to do with our dirt as well I want this to kind of like be coming off the back of this shoe of my subject alright so we're gonna take manti let's go ahead and lock the width and the height there all right let's move that down and then I'm going to change this down we can either do more darken or multiply but we kind of said earlier we didn't want to do that so let's move this in here I want to create an adjustment layer so we're going to grab a curve adjustment layer his option command g on that and then clip that and then you can see some of these light areas right there a little bit too light we did use the layer mask so if we need to weaken just the layer mask using their fine mask technique or I could just bring my white point down a little bit let's try this tio option planned our is the keyboard shortcut for for refined mask and let's shift this edge in just a little bit all right and we'll bring our feathering down a little bit more all right look better guess right cool yeah that looks pretty good there so I want this kind of looks like it's you know coming off the back of his uh back of this foot there I'm going to pop another levels just layer option command jeon that we're going to bring our darks quite a bit more especially like here on our under the foot you know like because the light would be kind of blocked by his foot all right cool that looks pretty nice and I'm gonna go ahead and darkened down the foot of our subjects well so again we can do that I'm just gonna grab a little adjustment layer option command you to do that I'm gonna darken down the back of his foot and that's going to help let that grass kind of look like it's made a maiden in dent there all right pretty cool all this stuff is just like you know every little detail we at here it's just gonna add volumes to the shot all right this guy let's go ahead and do the same clique on landmasses shift sorry option clan are it's going to be the same keyboard shortcut prey are feathering up a little bit and we're gonna shift our edge in quite a bit all right there we are now we're going toe grab a levels adjustment layer again option command cheese to clip that bring our white point down a little bit all right and here we go we've got dirt that I can get through it everybody we did it we can use this wherever we want to I'm gonna pop this back in black and white all right we can use this wherever we want teo and kind of my thing is I'm goingto let's just take command eat emerge those together all right I'm gonna make a couple copies this so um because it's it's it's good dirt and now we can kind of bring this in wherever we want to so I'm gonna kind of bring that in off of the back of this shoo we're goingto bring our white levels down to make it is it shouldn't have white around it right again we're going to bring our subject and I'm just going to use this same layer that we did a second ago and paint us in on the bottom of his shoe all right his shoes do look a little bit clean all right let's see what we can do what we can do about that I can hold down controller command and click on the dirt which is going to turn our dirt into a selection this is gonna be cool all right so I'm gonna turn that third into a selection then I'm going to hit em for my marquee tool right click and I'm going to say transform selection you know what this is gonna be really cool all right before I do that I'm gonna I've got the dirt as a selection I'm gonna hit shift elite and fill this with black on a new layer okay so this is just black dirt on a new layer when a right click on this I'm going to go down to duplicate laywer I'm gonna go down here to new I'm gonna hold down controller command and click on this goto image and then down to crop so cropped in on the dirt and then I'm gonna go to edit and then down to define brush preset now I've got dirt brush oh man this is gonna be cool all right let's switch back to my original image we've got our subject I could make this layer invisible new layer we're gonna clip it toward subject and now check this out well I'm goingto just show you guys how you can build a dirt brush really quick okay we're going to make a new layer and on layer above that each time I click it's going to be dirt and I can totally change the color of this or I can use this as a laywer mask to adjust in adjustment layer or I can go toe window down here toe brush and I can do things like shape dynamics aiken bring in my size tutor bringing an angle jitter and scattering so every time I click here now it's going to give us a random assortment of dirt all the dirt you could want so if I wanted to which I do want to I'm going to make an adjustment layer now on my subject right here I'm gonna grab a levels adjustment layer option command g I'm gonna make this quite a bit darker he command I on that grabbed my brush who'll make this a bit smaller and now I'm gonna paint dirt oh you know what I'm going to do also I'm gonna bring into transfer so my uh opacity jitter so some of this dirt will be darker than other parts of this dirt all right cool and now we have dirty shoes I feel like we need to make like aaron's dirty tricks jokes for a shop quick and dirty we can do with this on you know on his legs or whatever to if we wanted to do this if I was to do this on here I would select that area out and then run a gaussian blur she just um make this look like it's a little bit there we go yeah just like that just like what the heck man hey hey makes it look too easy all right um cool this is just fun I'm I think this stuff is fun all right so we've got some dirt flying off off of him there let's go ahead and add let's see select and I've got layers of dirt now aiken just hit command tea can rotate this around and we'll put some you know right around there is well all right right click it flipped vertical you want to try to like flip this stuff and make it is as like different as possible like all hitman j on this to duplicate that layer and now I'm just gonna like rotate it and make it really small to kind of come off of right there right so we want to make it is that is different as possible not just helps make it like you don't want the dirt to just look like that's the exact same piece of dirt everywhere even though it is but we've photographed multiple variations so if you really did want to take it and you know make it there we go if you did want to take this dirt and uh you know make it definitely different each time he would just cut out mohr of the dirt that you photographed all right really cool now I'm debating if this whole dirt group I should go above my foreground players group I think it shouldn't all right so that group dirt there all right and then filter blur this is going to just get a little bit of a motion blur there and depending on how much time we have I would actually probably go in and give just about everything here in motion blur are foreground subject I'm gonna right click on this and apply a layer mask and now he's going to get emotional er so filter blur you know what before we do that though smart object question before we apply a motion blur tow our subject I'm gonna right click on him and I'm gonna convert him to a smart object and the reason why I'm doing that is because I can change my blur after I turned him into a smart object so he's just mort object now so we're going to go to filter blur and then down here to motion blur give him a little bit of motion blur never go that I think looks pretty good but if at any point in time I decide that I need to change this motion blur all I have to do is open up this group I can turn that blur off and on and I can double click here in my motion blur and I could actually change it I could give him even more of a motion blur or less of a motion blur so to whomever asked the uh the smart object question I hope that helps out thank you how right you are welcome we're just rocking it all right cool let's go ahead and I'm gonna darken down the grass here in this part is well we're going to use a level adjustment there just so we're keeping everything consistent with the rest of the image all right you'll notice here if I bring a levels adjustment layer and darkened down this area across it makes my line disappear because the line is there based on a blending mode so I actually can't use my levels adjustment layer there clipped to my grass I have to do it above my grass slayer in order for it to actually work all right so or else it would totally make our line look it would make the line just completely disappear which we don't want all right and I think here is our line which I think this is going to need a little bit of a blur as well so we'll just go to filter blur and uh motion blur as well there we go just get the edges a little bit more blurred and then it's still going toe glenn didn't really nicely with our background all right really really cool um oh there's a giant think of dirt coming off the ball all right like what's going on all right let's open up our dirt group and then really anywhere we wanted to weaken let's use our new our new tool that's it viv but the for the movie toe command click on her dirt and I was able to find the layer that we actually wanted cool and that's thanks to teo right and then I'm gonna grab a levels just one layer option comanche to clip that and we're gonna make that darker but I only want this to be visible underneath the bowl because I want a light highlight around the around the dirt there all right and then let's just take a look real quick and make sure our composition is what we wanted to worse we're getting in here to the time when we actually you know we want to make sure our composition is is what we wanted because we start making these changes like if I move the ball I'm gonna have to start to move the dirt in the sweat and everything like that around it a swell so what do you guys think I'm trying to think like maybe I can make my subject a little bit larger here not that large um let's see maybe I could make the subject a little bit larger and what do you think does that look okay or didn't look better smaller it looks better bigger right just composition wise all right so you know what we scaled the subject with the bowl so now when hate controller command on the subject and on the bowl all right and I think that yep cool so let's kill them both at the same time sweat under too probably let's go ahead and do it all sweats subject and dirt all moving at the same time controller command tea and there we go that's cool yeah I like that a little bit better all right what do we think any other suggestions here like composition wise guys looks good looks good ride cool yeah well I thought the birds got grouped at some point with something else but I think it was just dirt oh background there there there it looks like they're flying off his shoe should we point out that's it's got birds flying off issues it's amazing he controls the birds cool let's see what's going on here in our our background all right here on our grass you can see I'm still in black and white I'm still not really messing with their color because there's so much let's go ahead and just give that a little bit blurry it's kind of looking blotchy there there's so much that has to get you know that we have to get right and all this stuff could be done in black and white before we really ever have to worry about what's going on in color all right so is this the majority of the composite then let's see we've got our sketch and yeah we can see we've altered slightly from the sketch but still relatively close which is which is exactly what we wanted to do all right we've got all of our dirt that's looking pretty good

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Fantasy Composite
Soccer Composite
Adobe® Photoshop® Keyboard Shortcuts
Gear Guide

Ratings and Reviews

Kim
 

This was the Best Creative Live course I have had the pleasure to watch. Aaron was so informative and explained each technique very well. He was so pleasant to watch because he was so humble and was so happy and excited about what he was creating. What an excellent teacher. I hope he does more seminars.

Curtis Roberts
 

Fantastic Course! I've watched (and purchased) many courses from Creative Live, and there are many good instructors; excellent instructors, in fact. Aaron's course on compositing essentials is one of the best. In addition to being a technical expert, he is a great teacher; a real talent. Great information and good illustrations/explanations. He does go a little fast when using Photoshop, and while I was trying to find the short-cuts keys, I would find he was three more points down the trail ahead of me. (That's part of why I bought the course ;-) )

Juli Miranda
 

I love the class he is generous, clear an super fun!! i highly recomend it. A lot of trics and cool information. He is Great teacher and super high level photoshoper... So greatfull. thanks!

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