All language subtitles for 5. Pushing Your Design Further

All right here's where the fun really begins on our Photoshop composite image project hopefully taking

the time to follow along and you've got an image in place here with the background and maybe a cut out

of yourself or the assets that I provided and you get your colors looking kind of close here we've got

maybe some shadows in place.

Just to reiterate here my shadow was just to show you how to do this in fact but realistically you know

it's coming from the side as far as lighting so that wouldn't be a great solution here.

But anyway take the time to get it right where you want and now we're going to push it further.

This is where the fun really begins because you can do as much as you want as much time as you have

.

You can go for it.

Here's another example of a project that I made for a client.

This was an actual poster we had printed that was there battlewagon they called it that's a real thing

.

And the before photo here I'll move it to the side.

Here is what I started with so we actually already had some bullet shells on the ground.

But the background wasn't that compelling the sky was kind of boring.

The colors were a little muted and this landscape isn't that impressive.

So what we ended up doing was bringing in some new mountain ranges did some coloring.

Then I brought in some custom flames that I bought at Creative market Dotcom's So they were already

isolated for me.

I got a little more visual interest in the sky going on here than I brought back in the battlewagon

here and you can see where selection's really play a huge part in selling this.

I actually had to cut through the glass but you'll see now we've got this blue overshadow here are this

this blue coloring.

And I had to cut out right here with the bumpers that was see through so the flames show through so

that a lot of attention to detail and even the reflection on the roof to make it look kind of real.

And then I came back and created window fake windows over the top.

It's more coloring added a flair layer here to kind of blend between the sky and even at a huge moon

.

Just because I could so it was a lot of fun to make this project so you can see.

You know don't don't just stop here with a background and an image of yourself.

Go ahead and add more elements.

In fact if you wanted to I will provide this isolated fire folder for you.

So if you wanted to you can just start bringing in maybe some fire or anything as you can imagine.

And again this has already been isolated for me so it does a pretty good job of blending into the background

but there's some ways that we can make this look even more realistic.

So one of the ways is dragging this layer behind him maybe duplicating it or bringing in another fire

object or just drag and drop right over the top here.

Scale it down and we'll bring this layer in front of him.

I'm going to command in the right bracket key just to move that up one step.

So now looks like he's actually standing in the fire.

We can play this even further if I zoom in.

Now when I come back this flame layer and double click and just to clarify here I don't want to double

click on the icon.

This is a smart object if I double click there it'll take me to the flame in the open in a different

file in a different tab.

So what we want to do is double click right here and not in the name either because they don't make

us rename the layer.

I want to click over here on the side and that opens up my layer styles so that where we can add a lot

of different things especially if it was a text layer or something else.

But right now what I'm really interested in is this blend If mode.

So right now I'm working on this flame in front of his foot and I can say anything that's bright on

this top layer this layer I mean the one I'm working on I can make it go away I can hold on the old

key and split this to kind of make it a smoother transition.

But that doesn't look quite like what I wanted to do so I could try the dark layers and there's really

not much darkness flame it's all bright.

That doesn't do what I want it to.

So let's try the underlying layer.

I'll start dragging this back.

So now anything with a light tone will start to show through some of those flames and the flame behind

now start to peek through a little bit and that way it looks like they're blending together.

And I'll drag a hold on the old key and drag right from the dark layers and now a shoe kind of starts

to come back and is just a subtle effect just enough to know that it's still there.

But the flames are in front of it.

So this is a really great trick to start blending layers together.

So OK and come back.

So you could really push this a lot further.

Another thing that we can do to sell this again our light sources from the left so we could use the

dodge and burn tools.

I'm going to click once on this layer and I'm going to rename it.

So it's double clicking here and I'll call this original For now really something original we've already

done some coloring to it.

But it's as close to the original as I have at command J to duplicate it.

Emily come over here and grab my dodge and burn tools and so the Dodge tool and the burn tool.

Basically what they do is look at that.

Let's look at the Darsheel first.

Right now I'm working on the mid-tone range.

My exposure is at 50 percent.

And now as I paint over this layer it actually exposes it and makes it brighter.

So I could come along the left edge here are any highlights that I want to really make pop whether it's

on his face and I can paint with mid-tone exposure at 50 percent and basically brightening it up.

So we're essentially painting with light and that's one of the biggest fundamental keys when you're

doing Photoshop composite images and you see some as really extreme HDR merge types of things.

A lot of times it's just painting with light or dark.

And I can turn this off and see where I've painted.

Another way to work is to I can turn that layer off.

This duplicate this originally or again and I could grab my layers or I'm sorry my levels command L

and I could just come in here and really crank up the details this way and I'll use Alair Masco click

on this Lehrman ask if I click right now and nothing happens.

It just adds a mass to be filled.

If I Allt click it actually fills that with black by default.

So you can't see it.

Everything's been hidden.

So now I can hit the B to get my brush tool and because black hides and white reveals I can swap this

right here or I'll hit the letter X to swap my foreground and background colors where I can have this

tiny little double arrow to swap which was in front.

I basically want to be painting with white.

So as I come through here and I start painting I'm actually unmasking or revealing the layer below it

.

Now up here I've got my opacity set to 12 percent so you're really not seeing any change.

I'm going to scrub that back up to 100 percent so you can see when I make sure I'm painting on my mask

layer here.

And then one other thing is I got to make sure my blend mode is set to normal up here so we see what's

going on.

There we go and that's a pretty harsh brush.

I could come back in.

Drop this opacity down quite a bit you know and just make some subtle subtle changes here.

And the benefit of working this way is if I change my mind or if I get too much I can hit the letter

X to swap.

And now I'm painting with black and I can come back in and reverse my mask.

So this weighs a lot less destructive it's a nice way to add some highlights or some dark tones so let's

go and do some dark tones now if I grab my original error and like command J There's a couple of ways

I could work here.

Let's finish that other dodge burn section.

I'll come back over to my dodge burn tool and how many is my burn tool and I can burn my highlights

my mid tones and my shadows whatever you want to do.

Like my mid tones.

And now as I start painting over this it just burns glare so it just adds more depth.

And you know I probably want to burn the right side a little bit to make it darker.

And right now I'm mostly showing you technique.

This doesn't look that fantastic but you can play with this depending on what your image needs and if

maybe you need to work on the shadows of the highlights you can just change the range and now it'll

only affect the highlight tones but not really the darker tone.

So that's a really nice way to really refine what you're doing here.

But again I like to work on destructively so what I'm going to do is duplicate that original layer all

more time command.

And I'm going to change my blend mode to multiply and now it's multiplying that layer and making everything

dark behind it.

That's one way to get it looking dark the other way I can connect my layer I'm trying my levels command

L and I could scrub here to bring in some darks but maybe pull back a little bit on the mid-tone So

I'm just really dealing with the dark tones.

Like I said there's a lot of ways to do the same thing.

So nomine idle airmass this Mella Allt and click on umask So now that dark tone has gone away.

Make sure I'm painting on that mask layer with my brush tool.

And as I I'm going to hit X to swap my foreground so it's painting with white to reveal so I can come

in here and start adding some of those dark tones if I wanted to you know really sell the fact that

there's a shadow on the side and you can see right away I do have some color issues here so it's one

of those things where depending on your image and what's in the image and what effect you're trying

to get you might need to use multiple techniques the dodge and burn you might need to use the blend

modes over here to get different effects and masking.

So these are all great ways to work but to really try and sell that effect and again you're going to

need to experiment with what makes sense in your image.

So I don't like the shadows I did there I'm going to turn it off and I don't mind those bright colors

.

The flame thing is a little you know obviously a little ridiculous but just wanted to show you that

you can work elements back and forth and bring in some different some different things.

Now if this truly was on fire here his leg would be glowing on this side.

So what we do is command click on this layer to get a selection and click on the new layer icon right

here to get a layer in front of it and I'm going to see there's a few ways we could do this.

I could sample all me use the letter I to get a sample of this color this yellow color it be to get

my brush tool and maybe drag my opacity down quite a bit and just kind of start to add some yellow highlights

there maybe get the letter.

I again to sample a different color within that and just kind of work in some different colors here

.

And then I can play with my blend mode there I'll come over here to my blend modes and this just changes

how the layers interact with each other how they blend whatever's on top blending with what's below

.

So a shortcut I like to use with your move to a selected letter V on the layer you want to change.

Now if I just hit shift and the plus sign or shift in mind is I can step back and forth between these

here and get a quick idea of what's going to look good so hold down shift.

And plus I just to cycle real quickly and see what color mode might interact to get the most realistic

effect there.

So and once I get some that I'm happy with this total preference just whatever you want to do I can

leave it there.

I can even push this a little bit further maybe I grabbed this flame hold on the Alt key to drag a copy

over here command to just change it a little bit here and maybe even reflect it.

All right click and I'll flip horizontal OK.

And now I'm going to do is come back down to this layer and you can see certainly a lot of layers so

what I'll do is I tear this off so I can see more.

All right so this flame in this layer is what I'm working with here so I'm going to drag this down.

And there's a few things I could do.

I could hold on the alter key and click between here and what that does is it uses whatever layers below

as a mask.

If I want to undo it all on alt and click between the layers.

So that's an easy way to.

Now I can move as layer around and you'll see it's masked by the shape below it.

Another way I can work is well that's actually my favorite way to work right now.

But now I can add a layer mask to this here and I can start to paint with black to hide some of this

I need to drag my capacity back up here and I can start to remove some of this here and I just want

to be a subtle effects.

I'm going to scrub my opacity for that layer down quite a bit actually.

I just wanted to be barely even just just barely hint that it's even there at all and that those are

the little details that as you build up more and more will start to really sell the effect that this

is really happening.

So play with that whether it's flames or putting it in a different environment.

Get that where you want it to go.

Use your your dodge and burn tools.

And now we want to do is try and bring all of this into one cohesive image so ways to do that.

Now we want to affect this entire image.

We did we did some of that with the color correcting but now we're going to look at adjustment layers

so let's go ahead and come down here to this little icon.

We'll click once on it.

And let's start with the photo filter adjustment layer or click once on that and then adds it right

above whatever layer I was I was selected I had selected.

And you'll notice so it affects the background image but it doesn't do anything to my flames or to the

guy standing here.

So what I'm going to do is drag this adjustment layer all the way to the top and now it affect everything

down below it.

I tell you this on and off for a quick it's a pretty subtle difference.

But it does affect the coloring of the image and it starts to make it feel more cohesive.

If I double click on that I can see I have some different mask options by double click on the camera

.

It brings me over to the properties of that adjustment layer so I can change to different filters some

different presets and you'll see they all have different effects on the image.

So what I'd like to do is probably leave it on this yellow or maybe the warming filter just to get a

subtle effect here.

Let's add another adjustment layer this time I'm going to do the hue saturation and there's some different

presets some different things you can play with you can work on the saturation to really pull out some

of the colors if you pull it too far turned into a black and white image too far the other direction

.

And it really starts to look terrible.

So play with that a little bit maybe bump it down just a touch.

You can work with the overall lightness of the image but you'll notice it's affecting everything every

layer and what this will help do for your image is make it feel like the photo was taken at the same

place at the same time.

Or we can jump over here to the preset.

I like the old style and that helps really make it feel like it's part of the same image.

Now this is a little bit too far probably because I've got this photo filter here if I turn that off

.

You'll notice it brings back a little bit of that and you just need to play with it maybe maybe grab

this layer and drop the opacity just a touch so it's affecting the layer but not not completely not

at 100 percent strength.

And that'll help just all these little details as you build them up really sell the image.

So now that you've done that go ahead and push this as far as you want and make sure you save along

the way as you go.

And the other thing we can do here.

Let me jump real quick into that nerd poster I made.

You can add layers to the very top of this so right now I've got this effect.

It's very very subtle but it's a little burst image Let me show you I've got a lot.

So unlock is layer turn my opacity all the way up and fill all the way up and you see I've got a blend

mode again set to overlay so it overlays the color on top of the layers below it but changed back to

normal.

You see it's basically a gradient like a radial solar flare and the whole reason that this is on this

image when you change it back to overlay drop down my fill and my opacity and you can see it's super

super subtle effect but it helps do is color all of it if I turn it back up you can see not all the

coloring on these people look quite right with the background.

So by putting this over the top of it it really helps darken the top right area but bright and this

like there is one unified light source.

So that's basically all we're doing with these layers creating a light source now that helps the whole

image look unified.

These adjustment layers over here these helped the coloring look consistent.

And now we want to bring the light source from one spot so there's a lot of ways to do this.

I just happen to use this solar flare things are going to drag and drop this over the top of everything

in this new image here command t to scale it up and resize it where it needs to be.

And as a scale you can kind of see those lens flares coming but it almost works out perfect for the

light source and the factory is coming from.

So I'm going to scale it to get it pretty close.

I return and now it made my overall image pretty dark.

So there's a few things I can do I can just drag the opacity down or I'm going to come back over here

with my move to like selected on shift and plus to cycle through some different effects here.

Some of these are more believable than others.

Some of these are totally unusable.

This penlight might be nice if you really wanted to keep that solar flare effect.

But again every image is different so just cycle through and see what effect gives you the best the

best results on your image.

And right now it's looking like nothing I've got to look at to is what it's doing to his face.

Right.

So it's looking like lightening might be a good solution.

That one's not bad color dodge.

Well then you dodge.

So just play with it.

Play with it see what works best.

And then again back off your settings just a little bit.

So it's not such an overkill effect and it's all the subtleties that add up to create a really compelling

composite image.

So good luck with that.

Go ahead and press on get your images just how you like it.

Be sure you save along the way in the next lesson.

We'll take a quick look at exporting what we've completed.