The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

20 tips for flawless photo edits

The Professional Photoshop Book 33

Creative retouCher and visual CommuniCator a mar KaKad (WWW.BEHANCE.NET/

AMARKAKAD) shows us how to edit different photos together seamlessly

5. COMBINE IMAGE ELEMENTS

01

BASIC COMPOSITE

First, when there are multiple

images, you do your cutouts and composite

them into your background. Decide what

requires scaling and distorting. Next, we use

02

RETOUCHING AND ADJUSTMENTS

Here we do some basic clean-ups,

remove any artefacts or unnecessary

reflections from objects, create shape and

form. You can use the Patch tool or the

03

DRAMA AND TEXTURE

In this stage we add further drama and

texture to the image. We are going towards a cold

look and feel. I added a blue flare painted with a

© p hotography by d

avid d ean (www.dean-pictures.com)

solid colour on a blending mode, and

incorporated some haze, bokeh effects and

some snow falling to give it more authenticity.

the Lens Correction filter. This can be found under

Filter>Lens Correction. It facilitates in the process

of correcting lens distortions and corrects the

Horizontal and Vertical perspective.

Clone Stamp tool to achieve this. To set

the mood, I used the Gradient Map, Black

& White, Color Balance, Selective Color

and Photo Filter adjustments.

© flewdesigns.com

6. CONTROL LIGHT,
   SHADOWS AND
   PERSPECTIVE
   Great compositing means bringing together multiple
   images and editing them so that they work together
   seamlessly in one scene. Lewis Moorhead (www.
   flewdesigns.com) explains how he creates his
   hyper-realistic composites: “To make multiple images
   work together and look seamless is not an easy task,
   but there are some steps to make sure you do this
   every time. I call it PSL (Perspective, Shadows and
   Lighting). Each image you use must have the same
   perspective to work together seamlessly, or you must
   be able to change the perspective, such as using the
   Perspective Warp tool or Transform tools. If the
   perspective is off, your whole image will look faked.
   The shadows must react with the lighting to be
   accurate. If the light source is in the left-hand side of
   the image, then you are going to get shadows on the
   far right of the object. I use a Round brush with 15%
   Opacity and 10% Flow. This way I can use a mouse as
   effectively as using a tablet for creating accurate
   shadows. For the lights I use a clipping mask on each
   object, either using a Color Dodge layer with Soft
   Round brush for harsh lights on a black background, or
   just a plain Overlay or Soft Light layer using a suitable
   colour similar to the light source. To bring all the
   images together to make them look like they belong, I
   sharpen the image and then use the Noise filter adding
   around one or two per cent.”

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