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  • #475883
    Anonymous

        A day or so ago I posted a photo showing the out-of-control trumpet vines in my backyard, referring to it as a jungle.

        With “jungle” in mind I played around with a couple of ideas and eventually came up with this…

        It was a fun exercise that gave me some experience in combining two photos into one image.

        #856975

        Oh wow, Dave, that so real. Next time you better take a gun with you when you go out back and start cutting down those vines.

        I am surprised to hear that you have never combined two photo together. Did you do this in PS? It was pretty easy, don’t you think? I am assuming you used masking.

        Photography is the art of observation. It has little to to with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. Elliott Erwitt
        Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Zuiko 14-150 mm zoom, Zuiko 2.8 60mm macro, Sigma 2.8 Fish Eye. Nikon D5100

        #856970
        Anonymous

            Thanks for looking and commenting, Lorell.

            I’ve done composites before but it’s been quite a while, so the refresher was good.

            Yes, I used masks with PSCS5, and yes it was quite easy. Could probably be done with any photo editor that features layers. For those interested in how I proceeded (I’m sure there are other ways)…

            1) I opened both photos in Photoshop.

            2) Selecting the base photo (the one with the vegetation), I created a new layer on the top.

            3) I selected the gorilla photo and resized it, simply making a guess about the right size. It’s important that whenever doing composites, all the photos be in the same resolution – 72ppi, 300ppi, etc.

            4) I pasted the resized gorilla photo into the new layer at the top of the stack of the background photo.

            5) On the now composite image I added an Exposure adjustment layer. This automatically appeared on top. Then I lowered the exposure (darkening everything) until the gorilla looked right to me.

            6) With this Exposure adjustment layer selected, I needed to restrict the adjustment to just parts of the gorilla so I filled it with black to hide the Exposure adjustment, then painted with white on the Exposure adjustment layer’s mask to reveal it where I wanted it – basically the gorilla’s face. This wasn’t a carefully meticulous painting because I knew I’d go back in and refine it later.

            7) Realizing that the gorilla’s face should pick up a greenish cast from all the leaves, I added a Photo Filter adjustment layer (I’m sure there are other ways to do this, but a Photo Filter seemed to be the easiest and fastest), selected a green hue and adjusted the Density (basically the strength of the green I wanted to add) until it looked right.

            8) Then just some fine-tuning: A) I went back to the gorilla’s layer mask and painted more carefully, using a small soft brush, with white and black to show or hide the gorilla. It seemed a good idea to have some of the flowers in front of the gorilla to push it deeper into the foliage, so I made sure to paint over those flowers that I wanted to appear in front of the gorilla. B) I added a Curves adjustment layer (at the top of the layer stack) because I wanted to brighten the eyes a bit, and lightened the entire image by dragging the midpoint of this Curves adjustment layer’s histogram upward until the eyes looked right. Then I filled this Curves adjustment layer’s mask with black to hide the lightening everywhere and carefully painted with white over just the eyes to reveal the lightening only there.

            One general tip: quite often I find that I need to use the same layer mask on different adjustment layers (Exposure, Photo Filter, USM, etc.) Rather than laboriously painting the same parts of the various layer masks multiple times, I just copy a layer mask from one layer to another: hold down the ALT key, click on the layer mask you want to copy to another layer, and drag up or down to a layer that you want to use the same mask – Photoshop will ask if you want to replace the existing layer mask, and just click on YES. I use this shortcut often, and it’s a huge timesaver.

            Sounds like a lot of work, but it only took a few minutes – far less time than it has taken me to type out the steps.

            (I apologize if I’ve missed any of the many typos I usually make.)

            #856976

            this is a great time saving hint:

            One general tip: quite often I find that I need to use the same layer mask on different adjustment layers (Exposure, Photo Filter, USM, etc.) Rather than laboriously painting the same parts of the various layer masks multiple times, I just copy a layer mask from one layer to another: hold down the ALT key, click on the layer mask you want to copy to another layer, and drag up or down to a layer that you want to use the same mask – Photoshop will ask if you want to replace the existing layer mask, and just click on YES. I use this shortcut often, and it’s a huge timesaver.

            thanks for sharing the details with us. I hope to see more magic creations like this now that you discovered how easy it is and the power of it .

            Photography is the art of observation. It has little to to with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. Elliott Erwitt
            Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Zuiko 14-150 mm zoom, Zuiko 2.8 60mm macro, Sigma 2.8 Fish Eye. Nikon D5100

            #856977
            Don
            Default

                Very nicely done, and thanks for the detailed instructions on how you did it. I really need to get back to my “learning” on PS. So much to do.

                Photo site - http://donlwilliamsphotography.com

                "A moment in time
                Immortalized forever
                With silver and light"

                #856971
                Anonymous

                    Thanks Lorell and Don – this was great fun to produce.

                    I mentioned copying a layer mask to reuse for different types of adjustment layers. But I forgot to add that copying a mask and then inverting it so that the effect of the adjustment layer is applied to the opposite parts of the image.

                    An example might help: let’s say you have a shot of a flower against a natural background. You may want to emphasize the flower as the COI by making a number of adjustments: sharpness, color intensity & vibrancy, values, etc. At the same time you may want to de-emphasize the background (maybe by desaturating or – one of my favorite techniques – adding a slight blur for a bokeh-like look). Once you have created an accurate layer mask of the COI (flower in this example) and applied sharpening, saturation, etc. to make it pop, you can use the same layer mask (after inverting it) to apply different adjustment layer effects to everything EXCEPT the flower. So if you want to slightly desaturate the background, create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and copy the mask that isolates the flower to this Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Then, making sure that you’ve highlighted the layer mask for this Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, simply select (in PSCS5 for Windows that is – other versions and photo editing apps may have different menu setups) > Image > Adjustments > Invert. Or in PSCS5, the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+I. Bingo! No need for repainting on a new layer mask to create the opposite of the mask you carefully created earlier.

                    I use this procedure of copying and inverting a layer mask often, and it’s a great time-saving technique.

                    #856974
                    Dreamin
                    Default

                        Really turned out believable! Nice work!!

                        Natalie

                        #856972
                        Anonymous

                            Thanks Natalie. As I mentioned, this one was great fun to do.

                            #856973
                            Michael
                            Default

                                I love it!

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