Tutorial: Create amazing photomontages

Tuesday 08 Apr 2008

Nik Ainley shows you how to make a splash, blending two very different images to create this amazing underwater effect, complete with a dissolving figure of a man.

Perhaps because of the overtones of freshness and vitality, water-based effects are always in demand. In this tutorial, Nik Ainley provides step-by-step guidance on how to make a stunning, dynamic effect that recreates the look of a figure dissolving in water, with some clever use of Photoshop and some found images.

Although the finished image appears hi-tech, it is just a very clever photomontage constructed from just two images, using relatively simple Photoshop techniques – the secret is in knowing which tool to use when, and putting the time into making sure it’s precisely executed.

This is a great technique for pieces where you want the clothes, not the face, to take centre-stage – for example, it makes an eye-catching fashion shoot. Of course, the beauty of photomontage is that anything is possible – it all depends on your found images and how far your imagination will roam.

Step 1
First, we need to prepare our main figure for manipulation: open breakdancer.jpg in Photoshop. We want to get rid of the background, hands and feet, as we won’t need any of these. This is a straightforward extraction job: trace around the area you want to keep with the Pen tool and use this to create a mask.

Step 2
I have decided to get rid of the green of the jacket, as I found it distracting. I used a Hue/Saturation command (Cmd/Ctrl + U), selecting to edit the greens and dragging the saturation down. I decided to do the same to the oranges.

Step 3
Now we need to get rid of the hand. Remove the thumb overlapping the sleeve with the Clone Stamp tool, then drag a patch from the sleeve over the thumb. Do the same where the top edge of the sleeve will be, to create the inside of the sleeve.

Step 4
The inside of the sleeve can be recreated by copying fabric from somewhere else on the jacket and then heavily darkening it (Cmd/Ctrl + M, and pull the curve downwards). Flipping it upsidedown to make it appear concave rather than convex completes the illusion. Since we will be covering it up later it doesn’t need to be perfect.

Step 5
To remove the face and torso, add a new layer above and use a soft brush to add black to it. This can fade off at the bottom to give the illusion of going inwards. At the top we want the black to have a hard edge where the hood is. To do this, use a layer mask to remove areas that overlap the hood at all.

Step 6
After a few tweaks here and there, we are ready to start adding water. Start with the main body. Now, I’m going to use several different photos of water at different points, but the same principles apply for bringing them into our picture. We need the water to have some transparency and also need to be able to extract its shape. Open the image water_splash.jpg.

Step 7
To extract the water from the background, we’re going to use a custom alpha channel generated from the photo itself. We need to find the colour channel with the most contrast between the areas that we want to be opaque and those we want to be transparent. Here, it’s clearly the red channel. Make a copy of this to a new channel.

Step 8
Using a curves adjustment (Cmd/ Ctrl + M), use the ‘Set Black Point’ dropper and select an area on your image you want to be totally transparent. If there’s no white in your image, then use the ‘Set White Point’ dropper on the lightest shade present. You should now have an image with much higher contrast.

Step 9
Now we have our alpha channel for the water, we need to make it into a selection. Hold down Cmd/Ctrl and click on the channel’s thumbnail in the Channels palette. It should now appear as a selection. Make sure the RGB channel is active and copy the selected pixels (Cmd/Ctrl + C) and paste them into your main document.

Step 10
This is looking all right, if a little crude. To get it into the right shape we need to use the Transform tool to pull the water about a bit. The Warp Transform function is especially good for this. Use a layer mask to get rid of any bits that overlap areas you don’t want them to, as well as any hard edges.

Repeat the same process using as many different photos of water splashes as you can find: place them around and mask where appropriate. You should get used to the idea of converting an image’s pixels into a selection and using that to build a new shape. The advantage of this method is that we get far more precise control over blending than we would by using a Blending Mode.

Step 12
Once you have all your water in place we need to think about the background. Pure black is rather dull, but we don’t want some violent colour clashing with our main figure. Create a new layer above the background and start using a soft brush to add some dark blue. Flatten your image again, and run a light Unsharp Mask to finish it off (settings 30, 0.6, 0).

Step 13
This is OK, but not overly interesting. Textures are a quick way to add interest to the background. Paste a weathered texture above the background and set the blending mode to Soft Light. Desaturate it if it messes the colours up. That’s looking better, although a little flat.

Step 14
Open a bubbly texture and massively darken it using a curves adjustment (Cmd/Ctrl + M) so that only the lightest parts (what should be the bubbles’ edges) remain. Paste this into your document above the first texture and set the blending mode to Linear Dodge. Drop the opacity of the layer if the bubbles appear too intense.

Step 15
This should basically be it. The next adjustment is to draw focus to the centre by blurring the edges a little. Flatten your image and duplicate your layer. Now blur the image (a Gaussian blur set to 30 pixels should do the job). Add a ‘hide all’ layer mask to this layer, and using a gradient that changes from white to transparent, drag from the outside in to blur specific areas of the edges.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Tutorial - HDR - High Dynamic Range

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Tutorial - HDR - High Dynamic Range
by Mark Galer

Contrary to popular opinion – what you see is not what you always get. You may be able to see the detail in those dark shadows and bright highlights when the sun is shining – but can your CCD or CMOS sensor? Contrast in a scene is often a photographer’s worst enemy. Contrast is a sneak thief that steals away the detail in the highlights or shadows (sometimes both).

A wedding photographer will deal with the problem by using fill-flash to lower the subject contrast; commercial photographers diffuse their own light source or use additional fill lighting and check for missing detail using the ‘Histogram’. Sometimes, however, there is not enough fill light to resolve the problem, so the photographer has to resort to taking multiple exposures (bracket the exposures) and then merge detail from each in a new composite image.





Photoshop’s Merge to HDR (High Dynamic Range) automated feature has been improved for CS3, but it is still not able to merge exposures where subjects have moved between the separate exposures. The technique in this tutorial (taken from the new Photoshop CS3: Essential Skills book) shows you how to resolve this problem. This technique also offers superior midtone contrast than Photoshop’s merge to HDR automated feature.



STEP 1
Open two different exposures of the same scene in Adobe Camera RAW. Click on the lighter image thumbnail and optimize the shadow detail (pay no attention to the highlights that will clip).



STEP 2
Click on the darker thumbnail and this time optimize the highlight detail. Click on Select All in the top left-hand corner of the ACR dialog box and while holding down the Shift key click on the Open Objects button. The two images will now open as Smart Objects.



STEP 3
Select the ‘Move tool’ in the Tools palette and drag the dark underexposed image into the window of the lighter overexposed image (alternatively just drag the thumbnail from the Layers palette with any tool selected). Holding down the Shift key as you let go of the image will align the two layers (but not necessarily the two images).



STEP 4
In the Layers palette set the blend mode of the top layer to ‘Difference’ to check the alignment of the two images. If they align no white edges will be apparent (usually the case if the tripod was sturdy and the two exposures were made via an auto timer feature or cable release). If the layers are not perfectly aligned you may need to nudge the layers into alignment using Free Transform as the new Auto-Align Layers command does not work with two Smart Object layers.



STEP 5
Click on the Add layer mask icon in the Layers palette. Switch off the visibility of this layer by clicking on the eye icon next to the layer thumbnail. Choose ‘All’ from the Select menu (Ctrl/Command+A) and then choose Copy Merged from the Edit menu (Shift+Ctrl/Command+C). Hold down the Alt/Option key and click on the layer thumbnail. The image window should appear white as the layer mask is empty. Now choose ‘Paste’ from the Edit menu (Ctrl/Command+V). Apply a 1.5-pixel Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) to this mask before. Alt/Command+click to return to the normal view.



STEP 6
It is important to recreate the expanded contrast of the original scene otherwise the image will look slightly surreal if the overall contrast is low. The first technique to expand the contrast is to select the Layer mask and apply a Levels adjustment (Ctrl/Command+L). Drag in the Output sliders (directly beneath the Shadow and Highlight sliders) until the final contrast appears high but not clipped (lowering the contrast of the mask increases the contrast of the final image).



STEP 7
Anything that moves in the time difference that it takes to make the two exposures will create a ghost image of itself. Any ghosting can be removed using the new Retouch tool in Adobe Camera Raw. Double-click the layer thumbnail of the top layer, or smart object, in the Layers palette to open the image in the ACR dialog box. Use the Retouch Tool in the ACR dialog box to remove any object that has moved between the two exposures. If the heal area becomes contaminated with pixels from adjacent pixels of a very different color or tone, switch from Heal to Clone in the Type options. Select OK to apply the changes.



STEP 8
As we have already created a mask the ghost image is also present in the layer mask as well as the smart object. Hold down the Alt/Option key and click on the layer mask thumbnail. Select the Brush Tool and hold down the Alt/Option key and click on a tone next to the objects to be removed. Paint over any areas of the image where ghosting was occurring using a soft-edged brush. Click on the Image thumbnail to return to the normal view. The ghosts will now be gone.



STEP 9
From the Create new fill or adjustment layer menu in the Layers palette hold down the Alt/Option key and select a Levels adjustment layer. From the new Layer dialog box select the Overlay or Soft Light mode. In the Levels dialog box drag the two output sliders towards the center of the gray ramp to limit the increase in contrast to just the midtones (levels 100 to 200).



STEP 10
Open the Info palette and look at the RGB values when the mouse cursor is positioned over the dark shadow tones in the image window. If they are too dark to print to a typical output device (below level 15), you can double-click the bottom Smart Object to reopen the ACR dialog box. In the Tone Curve tab raise the shadow values as required. Select OK to apply the changes.



STEP 11
One way of controlling luminance and contrast in the shadows is to apply a Shadow/Highlight adjustment to the base Smart Object (Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight). Both the Midtone contrast slider and the Radius slider in the Shadows section can be used to control the localized contrast in the shadows. Select OK to apply this adjustment as a smart filter to the smart object.



STEP 12
Complete the project by adding a Smart Sharpen filter to the same Smart Object, as this is where the bulk of the fine detail resides in this composite image. Select OK to apply the changes. Applying a sharpen filter to this smart object (a camera Raw file) instead of a rasterized layer (created by merging the visible elements to a new layer) means that we have deferred applying any ‘destructive’ changes to the image data in this file. The automated HDR feature would have to process the data to achieve the same result and the ducks would not be happy.

Photoshop Masking & Montage Tutorial

Photoshop Masking & Montage Tutorial — Using Masks To Improve Landscape Images
Adapted from "Photoshop CS3 Essential Skills" by Mark Galer and Philip Andrews

Tutorial Work Files
You can download the images needed to work along with this tutorial. Visit Mark Galer's site (link opens in a new window) for instructions on how to access them. The images are high resolution and will make it easier to reproduce the exact effects from this tutorial.





Original Venice image by Craig Shell (sky by Mark Galer)

Drama in Venice
Venetian classical painters had a passion for moody and tempestuous skies (just Google the Tempest by Giorgione to see one such example). I now find it hard to look at an image of Venice with a featureless sky. The sky is an essential ingredient of any memorable landscape image. Unfortunately it is not something the photographer can control unless we have limitless time and patience. The commercial photographer is often required to deliver the goods on a day that suits the client rather than the photographer and weather forecast.

In these instances it is worth building a personal stock library of impressive skies that can be utilized to turn ordinary images with bland skies into impressive ones. The digital compact set to a low ISO is ideal for capturing these fleeting moments. The most useful skies to collect are the ones that include detail close to the horizon line, i.e. captured without interference from busy urban skylines, such as can be found at the beach or in the desert.

A stock library of skies is included on the DVD of the new Photoshop CS3 Essential Skills book (published by Focal Press) to help you start, or add to, your own collection. In this project we explore how a sky can be adapted to fit the landscape so the montage is not immediately obvious.



Step 1
Select the Magic Wand Tool from the Tools palette and set the tolerance to 20 in the Options bar. Select the Add to Selection icon in the Options bar or hold down the Shift key as you click multiple times to select all of the sky. Zoom in to 100% or ‘Actual Pixels’ and select Quick Mask mode from the Tools palette.

Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to select the tops of the buildings that were not included in the mask because the Magic Wand may have become over zealous. Fill this selection with black (if Black is the foreground color in the Tools palette you may use the keyboard shortcut Alt/Option+backspace/delete). Exit Quick mask Mode when this work is finished (keyboard shortcut is to press the letter Q).



Step 2
Open the Sky image used in this project and from the Select menu choose All. From the Edit menu choose Copy. Return to the Venice image and from the Edit menu choose Paste Into. Don’t be alarmed at how bad it looks at the moment, we have several more steps to go before things start to look OK. For the moment we must be content that the sky was captured at a similar time of day to the Venice image and the direction of light is also similar. From the Select menu choose Deselect.



Step 3
Make sure the Image rather than the mask is the active component of the layer and then choose Free Transform from the Edit menu (Ctrl/Command+T). Click and drag inside the Transform bounding box to raise the sky into position. Click and drag on the top-center handle to further enhance the location and shape of the sky to fit the host image. Press the Enter/Return key to commit the transformation.



Step 4
Click on the layer mask to make it active and then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Choose a 1-pixel Radius in the Gaussian Blur dialog box and select OK. Go to Filter > Other > Maximum and enter a Radius of 2-pixels. This should be sufficient to remove any light halo from around the edges of the buildings. Select OK to apply these changes to the mask.



Step 5
Hold down the Alt/Option key and select a Curves adjustment layer from the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon in the Layers palette. In the New Layer dialog box check the Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask option. Select OK to open the Curves dialog box. Create a curve that renders both the highlights and midtones of the sky very bright so that they match the tones of the distant buildings. Skies that have been captured in less humid conditions will always require this adjustment if they are look at home in a location where there is reduced contrast together with lighter tones in the distant subject matter. Select OK to apply the changes.



Step 6
Select the Gradient Tool from the Tools palette. In the Options bar choose the Black, White and Linear gradient options and an Opacity setting of 100%. Click and drag a gradient from the top of the image to a position just above the horizon line. Hold down the Shift key to constrain the gradient. This will give the sky depth and ensure the sky retains it drama above the buildings in the foreground.



Step 7
Create a second Curves adjustment layer by holding down the Alt/Option key and adding this layer to the Clipping mask. The purpose of this second adjustment layer is to increase the intensity of the light on the left side of the image. This will help establish the light source that is bathing the buildings on the right side of the image in a warm afternoon glow and help establish a realistic effect.

Raise the overall brightness using the RGB channel and increase the warmth using the individual Red and Blue channels. Observe the effect above the foreground buildings on the left side of the image. When you have achieved a warm glow select OK.



Step 8
Fill the layer mask with Black (Edit > Fill > Black). Select the Gradient Tool from the Tools palette. Select the Black, White and Radial options. Set the mode to Screen and select the Reverse checkbox in the Options bar. Drag a short gradient from behind the buildings on the left side of the image to the top-center of the image.





Step 9
Select the top layer in the layers palette and then stamp the visible layers to a new layer (Select > Select all, Edit > Copy Merged and Edit > Paste). Go to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction. Go to the Vignette section of the dialog box and lower the Amount slider to -100. Raise the Midpoint slider slightly so that the vignette does not encroach too heavily on the buildings on the extreme right-hand side of the image.

Select OK to apply these changes. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. Be generous with the amount and keep the radius small (under 1 pixel). The project is now complete and the scene carries all the mood of an old Venetian painting courtesy of a dramatic sky.

Adapted from "Photoshop CS3 Essential Skills" by Mark Galer and Philip Andrews © 2007. Used with permission. Learn more tips and tricks from Photoshop expert Mark Galer.

Advanced Glow Effects

Sep 15th in Effects by Collis

In this tutorial, we're going to create some really sharp-looking glow effects using a combination of layer styles, the Pen Tool and Color Blending. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you'll pick up some tips you didn't know before.

Step 1:

As with pretty much every tutorial I've ever written, we begin with a radial gradient. This one is pretty harsh and goes from a reddish brown color to black. Here are the exact color codes:

Foreground color - #922f00
Background color - #000000

Step 2:

In this tutorial, we actually need a pretty intense center, so what we'll do is duplicate the layer we just made and set the one above to a blending mode of Color Dodge. There are a few types of blending modes, darkening ones, lightening ones, colorizing ones and inverting ones. Color Dodge is probably the strongest of the lightening ones. As you can see in the screenshot, it produces a pretty full-on center.

Step 3:

Now in our glow effect, it helps to have a nice textured background. So we are going to create a sort of smoky haze. To do this, create a new layer, then make sure you have white, #ffffff, and black, #000000, selected as your background and foreground colors.

Then go to Filter > Render > Clouds. This will give you the same random cloud pattern as above.

Step 4:

Now set the opacity of your layer to Overlay and 30% transparency. In some instances this would be enough, but for our needs we want it even smokier looking!

So go to Filter > Sketch > Chrome and use default settings of 4 and 7 for detail and smoothness respectively. Actually you can probably mess around with those if you want, but the defaults seem to be fine.

When you're done, the result should look a lot smokier (once its overlayed at 30% transparency that is). You can see the result in the background of the next screenshot.

Step 5:

Now before we can start making glows, we need to have something to glow. Here's where we break out the pen tool. If you have used the pen tool much I suggest playing around with it a little. There are some tricky things you can do with shortcuts, but for this tutorial you don't need those.

In fact all we want to achieve are some nice curves. Fortunately this isn't too hard. I find the trick is not to use too many points. Instead rely on the Pen Tool's natural curving and drag the mouse out for each point so you get a big angle. In this S-curve shown above, I've only used three points, the starting point, the end point and one in between to give it the bend.

Step 6:

Once you have a nice curve, create a new layer. Then click on the Paintbrush Tool (B) and choose a very thin, hard brush. As you know, soft brushes are the blurry ones and hard brushes are more solid. In this case I suggest using a thickness of 3.

Note that you can have any color selected as your brush color because we'll go over it with a layer style shortly.

Step 7:

Now switch back to the Pen Tool. You must switch tools in order to do this next bit.

Then right-click and select Stroke Path. A little dialog box will appear as in the screenshot. Choose Brush and make sure there is a tick next to Simulate Pressure. This is important as it will give your curve tapered ends which will make it rock!

Next right click again and select Delete Path.

Step 8:

You should now have something like the above. Just a thin, cool swishy thing.

Step 9:

Now we add some glows. The easiest way to make our glows is to use layer styles. And the best way to tell you what layer styles to use is to tell you to download the sample Photoshop PSD from the bottom of this page and then open it up and look through them there.

In a nutshell, I've added two sets of glows. To do this I first use Outer Glow and then because I want a second glow, I change the Drop Shadow settings so that it becomes a glow (you can do this by reducing the Distance and changing the blend mode to something like Color Dodge)

Oh and also I've used a Color Overlay to make the item white so that its like the center of an intense glow.

Step 10:

So now you have the same line but with a cool glow coming off it. The beauty of using a layer style is that you can copy and paste it to other layers. To do this you just right-click the layer and select Copy Layer Style then create a new layer and right-click and choose Paste Layer Style.

Step 11:

So now repeat the same process a couple of times to make more squiggly lines.

In this instance, I made one a little thicker by changing the paint brush size before I did the Stroke Path bit of the process. I also made a third line and erased part of it and sorta made it join the other two to look like a cool triangular shape.

Step 12:

Here I've added some text in and applied the same layer style to the text layers.

It's important to pay lots of care and attention to your text. When you're first starting out, use simple fonts and play with spacing between letters, words and sizes. You can achieve a lot with just some small tricks. Here I've contrasted the three words by making Glow a lot larger and in regular casing, then made Advanced and FX much smaller, with greater space between the letters and all caps.

You can control spacing with text using the Character window. If it isn't already open go to Window > Character and it should appear. Mess about with the different settings until you learn what each controls.

Step 13:

Now we add some particles. To do this, create a new layer then select a tiny paint brush - size 3 - and just paint some dots on. It helps if they are clustered towards the center of the glow so that it looks like they are emanating from there.

You can make some of the central ones larger by doubling over on them with a second paint brush dab.

Then paste our Glow layer style on to that layer too!

Step 14:

Now that's looking pretty cool, but it will look even cooler if we give it some subtle coloring instead of this super gaudy red.

So create a new layer, and using a radial gradient, draw a blue to white gradient as shown.

Step 15:

Then set that layer to a blending mode of Color and change the opacity to 50%.

You'll see that it turns the image kind of bluish. I think that's looking much cooler already, but just to go that extra step I also created a couple of extra layers, one with some faint yellow and one with faint purple. You can see them in the screenshot above.

I set each layer to blending mode of Color and thin opacities so that they all fade together.

Step 16:

And there you have it: advanced glow effects with a cool color blend and subtle smoky background combined make for a pretty great effect.

Just remember to experiment with settings and try applying the glow to different things to see how it turns out. And try different color combinations, some surprising combinations turn out really beautiful. Good luck!