PHOTOMANIPULATION
QUICK TIP
It’s not uncommon to come to a crossroads when creating an image. Sometimes you see two very
different end results in your mind. Try them both! Save your PSD under two different names and try out
both ideas. Compare them and decide what one you like better. You may even decide to use them both for
different things.04
MASK THE BODY
The key to any great composite is having
very clean masks. Focus on the body and clothing
first. Always add a layer mask so you can use black to
remove and white to add back. A pen tablet comes in
handy. Take your time. Zoom in to 500% and with a
black Hard brush, set at 8 pixels, follow the outline of
what you want to extract. If you make a mistake, just
switch your brush to white and paint it back. To make
sure you are masking out everything that needs to be
transparent, press the \ key and your mask will turn
red. Press it again to turn it off.05
MASK THE HAIR
When you have contrast between the hair
and background, extracting the hair is much easier.
Duplicate your subject and add a Hue adjustment
layer and a Levels adjustment layer. Bring the
Saturation all the way down on the Hue layer. With
the Levels layer move the left and right sliders
towards the middle. The idea is to make the
background as white as possible and the hair as
dark as possible without distorting it. Use the Quick
Selection tool to select the face and all the hair.
Then you want to use Refine Edge to refine and
apply your mask.06
PREPARE THE BACKGROUND
The main problem with the background
image is it was taken during the day instead of in
darkness. This is a simple fix. First you want to
follow the same procedures from Steps 3 and 4
and extract the buildings by masking the sky. After
that you want to drop an image of some dark
storm clouds behind the city image. Use a Curves
adjustment clipped to the background or the
clouds to get the exposures about the same. Group
the two images and clip a Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer to the group and bring the
Saturation down to about 50%. Colours aren’t as
vibrant when it’s dark and cloudy.07
MAKE THE EYES POP
Making the eyes of your subject pop can
really add emotion into the image. The key is to keep
it subtle but effective. Create a Curves adjustment
layer on top of all the other layers. When you do this
it will have its own mask already filled with white.
You want to fill the mask with black and grab a white
brush. Paint in the mask only over the pupils and iris.
Now you want to make an S shape on your Curves
layers. On your graph add a point about a quarter of
the way up, one in the middle, and one about
three-quarters of the way up. Leave the one in the
middle and bring the top one up slightly and the
bottom one down. You can now adjust the opacity of
this layer if the effect is over the top.08
COLOUR MATCH THE SUBJECT AND BACKGROUND
Use an individual Curves adjustment layer on top of the background layer. Make sure it is clipped
to only the background layer by selecting Layer>Create Clipping Mask. Use the RGB channel to adjust the
exposure so that it matches the model. Next use Channels to match the temperature of the model. You
may want to repeat this process on the model. You will end up blending the two images even more when
you get to colour grading.