The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

Master lighting in composites

The Professional Photoshop Book 89

07

FOCUS ON HIS FACE

Let’s get started with the lighting on the

superhero’s face. For that you must use the Burn

tool (O) to enhance the shadows and the Dodge

tool (O) to enhance the lights. At this stage make

sure you don’t overdo the details. One trick you

can use before starting to treat the image is to

duplicate the layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J), because if you

make any mistakes you can create a mask and

erase them easily.

06

WARM THE SCENE

There is no quick fix or magic trick to getting

the lighting just right. It will take a lot practise to

effectively translate your creative vision into the scene

believably. A good tip to improve your style is to always

check references – it serves to warm up your brain first

before creating your own scene. In this step start work

on the image’s tone, duplicate the layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J)

and paint it (Alt/Option+Delete) with red then change

the layer blend mode to Colour at 10%.

05

PLACE THE HERO

Now the fun part begins, we will place

the image of our superhero – available on FileSilo

• into the scene. The first step to mixing the
  picture with the scene is to apply a 3px feather
  (Shift+F6). Perhaps this is the part that will require
  the most of your previous Photoshop knowledge.
  The great secret is not to memorise what each
  tool does, but it is knowing what you can do and
  create by mixing them.

QUICK TIP: USE THE SETTINGS MENU

To avoid losing any colour information, make any adjustments using the settings menu. Using this will

automatically create a mask. To delete colour use the Brush tool (B) with the black colour selected, if you

want to return the original colour, use the Brush tool with the white colour selected.

08

MAKE A QUICK MASK

When you work with lighting, you should always be aware

of all the details, in this case we will make a Quick Mask (Q+Brush

tool) to select the blue part of his shoulder. This is a very good tool

because you can select exactly the area that must be changed. The

next step is to use the Color Balance tool (Cmd/Ctrl+B) to change

the blue colour to red. A High Pass filter (Filter>Other>High Pass)

should also be applied to enhance the details.

09

RETOUCH THE SKIN

The secret of this step is to always think smooth when you are making a skin

treatment. It’s essential that you keep the important facial details – you only want to get

rid of unwanted wrinkles, pimples or blemishes. We suggest that you use the Patch tool

to make small adjustments. This tool is extremely efficient for skin treatment. Do not be

afraid to zoom right in on the image in order to make your edits – even the tiniest of

details have to be correct in order for the image to be believable.

Before

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