- PHOTOGRAPH AND PAINT
- MAINTAIN A
PAINTERLY FEEL
Martin Nebelong (www.martinity.com) shares his
advice to bring together photography and painting skills
to create a photobash composition. “It’s important that
you have a clear idea about where you’re going before
you bring in any photos. If you don’t, the photos will end
up dictating the direction you’re going in and you’ll end
up limiting your creativity. I always start by setting up the
scene either as line art or as a speed-paint to make sure
that I stick to my original idea.
“[You need] to have the photos match the form and
perspective of the source painting. I use Free
Transform and drag the handles of the transform box
using a combination of Cmd/Ctrl, Alt/Option and Shift
for perspective distortion, rotation and scaling. If that
doesn’t get me where I need to be, I use the Warp tool,
which enables you to warp the photo more freely. This“[You] should always bear in mind that
[photobashing] is a painting technique. Theend
result, whatever the level of realism aimed for,
should ideally have a painted feel and not just that
of a photomashing or pasted on. It is the means to
an end, not the end itself,” says Ricardo Guimaraes.
He suggests starting with a composition that
doesn’t use photos, before moving on to adding
stock. “Resorting to photos too early in the process
will stiffen the whole painting and usually the end
result will be way too much towards the
photo-collage feel.
“Changes in Hue, Saturation and Contrast all
come into play in order to perfectly integrate the
different photos with the painting. Besides
extensively using several different layer blending
modes, among the most used tools are the
adjustment layers, Channels, masks and filters, as
well as clipping layers to layers below.”
is especially useful for textures and effects such as
smoke or fire.
“Once you’re happy with the result, it’s time to
blend the photo into the painting. This is done using
layer styles, blending modes, masks or brushes.
Adjustment layers such as Levels and Hue/
Saturation are great for matching tone and colour
between photos and painting. Again, consistency is
key, so try to make sure there’s no sudden tone,
hue or saturation jumps between painting and
photo elements.
“Remember not to go nuts with photo materials.
Have calm areas in your painting, areas for the eye to
rest upon. Break up the pacing of the painting and
make sure not all areas are equal in terms of detail
and contrast.”- USE THE
TRANSFORM TOOLSET
The Transform set of tools is essential for making the
photos used work with the composition that has been
created. Sebastien Hue says: “Cmd/Ctrl+T for the
Transform tool is for sure the most used Photoshop
tool, as far as I’m concerned, to transform my
selections by resizing, extending, squashing and
duplicating the cut elements.
“This transformation process is genius and so much
fun. While you are playing with the toolset you can
achieve very nice results by just squashing a motor, or
warping a design into another. This is a very creative
tool for me, not just a way to change scale or forms.
For instance, the buildings in the Frozen Gold image
(pictured) have been photobashed with some motor
pieces that I squashed. It really gives the sci-fi look to
those towers.
“Sometimes I just don’t know where to go in terms
of inspiration and so I just randomly take some stocks
and transform them into other forms, I combine,
duplicate and so on. This is a good remedy to avoid the
blank page... It can nourish your creativity even more.”
20 PROFESSIONAL TIPS FOR PHOTOBASHING TECHNIQUES
Rock blending:blended into the painting using The rocks are
Perspective Warp, the High Pass filter and the Overlay blending
mode. Also it is masked, to fade out the edges of the photoSmoke effect:is done using a photo of whiteThesmokeeffect
smokeonablackbackground.By setting the layer blending
mode to Screen only the lightareasofthephotoareshownTexture overlay:usingatilabletextureoverlayedonaThis walkway is made
rectangularformasaPattern(fromBlending Options), then rasterized and
transformedtomatchtheperspectiveBlending options:element is merged with the painting by using This industrial plant
the Blend If blending options, which makes certain ranges of your photo transparent© SHUE-DIGITAL© Ricardo Guimaraes© Martin Nebelong