It's A Guy Thing

skipper954 · 08-04-2007, 16:34

Whiskey, cigar and a woman. What could be better?

The downside of setting up this image is that I had to smoke the cigar and drink the whiskey (it is called scotch in the US). The things one does for art!!

However, I am presenting this for c and c and everyone's thoughts about ps processing.

I obviously moved CJ to the ashtray after selecting, quick mask, free transform, blur, burn and prayer.

So, how would you make the edges more realistic? I used magic wand and quickmask to select. What would you have done differently?

skip

***Dave*** · 08-04-2007, 16:58

Robs tutorial here may well hope :- Matching lighting & Colour when compositing

I also saw a video tutorial where an imposed item had an inner shadow added of a few pixels to help the blend. You can choose the colour to use as thew shadow, plus light direction to match rest of shot

Hope that is of some use

skipper954 · 08-04-2007, 17:11

Thanks, Dave. That is exactly the information for which I am looking.

skip

***Dave*** · 08-04-2007, 17:21

Looking forward to the end result

skipper954 · 08-04-2007, 17:32

Problem - I didn't save my selection - dumb - and that is what took the most time! But i shall work on it again. I am retired and have plenty of time

***Dave*** · 08-04-2007, 17:38

Retired !!!! Your avatar belies your years ..... must move to the coast , or is it all those attractive women you shoot that keeps you looking young

Trashcan · 08-04-2007, 23:06

In my opinion, I would go along the bottom edge of her body (butt, leg, foot) and blur the artifacts away. Other than that, like someone said, the color and lighting needs to be matched. Otherwise it looks great

chickadee · 09-04-2007, 01:23

apart from left shoulder , right leg and arm (our right) being to light and bit on the glarey side for my liking , the only other thing that i personally dont like is ,the top of leg (our left ) and the rib cage and side area seem to highlight the sligt flabby or wrinlkley bits.Apart from that , think you have nailed the overall effect you were after.

**Angela** · 09-04-2007, 23:08

You're right Skip....it's definitely a guy thing!

nichpr · 10-04-2007, 00:04

Harsh light - soft light, yep needs some tweeking. BUT, I love the concept. Cool shot.
Retired or not - you are only as old as you think.
- Paul

skipper954 · 10-04-2007, 01:25

I have been working on this dang thing off and on for 2 days now. Nowhere near where I want to be, but hopefully I will be there eventually.

(Where is Rob when I need him????)

skip

Rob Barron · 10-04-2007, 20:27

Cooeeee! I'm back!

Glad someone missed me anyway <g> Love the fun idea you had here Skip, glad she didn't fall into the ashtray though, she'd not have been impressed!

Ok, the edges: feather before you cut out. Now, one point here you need to remember: make sure the picture you are cutting from and the one you are pasting to are both of the same resolution before you start. If they aren't, adjust one of them to make it the same as the other. Otherwise you're going to get jagged edges on one of them.

You don't need to feather by much, one pixel is fine and you can even use 0.5 pixels at times. To apply feathering, the simple shortcut is crtl+alt+D then just type the number in the window.

If you get your cut-out into the new image and it looks too jagged, try this:

1. On the layer containing the cut-out, hold down Ctrl and click on the picture icon (in the layers pallet) - this will select the cutout.
2. Go to: Select>Modify>Contract and contract by one pixel. Now feather this by one pixel.
3. Invert the selection (Ctrl+shift+i) so now the whole of the layer is selected but only the very edge of the cut-out. This is now the only part that can be affected.
4. Go in real close and use a very soft brush. Hit E to use the eraser tool and erase the edge keep the brush itself away from the line, just letting the very soft edge of the brush remove a feathered part of the edge of the cut-out.

Ok, other pointers:

Anything on a flat surface will cause a shadow if it is curved and people are always curved! So, there will always be a darker area along the bottom edge (light being above of course) of the cut-out figure. So, burn that area down slightly so it looks more like a curve.

Add a shadow for the cut-out taking care to use an angle appropriate for where the light is coming from in the main image. There are loads of ways of adding a shadow but a simple way is to simply add a drop-shadow on a new layer and then distort it slightly to fit accordingly. Keep it soft and not too dark but remember the general principle: the stronger the light, the darker the shadow.

Ok, hope that is of some use Skip. Obviously we are not looking for total reality as we all know we don't find beautiful young ladies wearing bikinis sitting on the edge of our ashtrays (but if you know where this does happen without taking drugs, let me know!) but we want it to at least look faux-realistic so we just enjoy the fun of the picture without being jarred by the composition itself.

Have fun and let's see another effort!
Cheers,
Rob