Meet Kate

One of my students graciously allowed me to use her visage for this quick little lessons on image compositing. I photographed Kate with a fairly direct light, but the exposure is overall excellent. In other words, I can manipulate the image sufficiently to create a very modeled look despite the absence of professional photo lights.

We are using PhotoShop of course, and this lesson emphasizes the use of layers and layer properties in helping you build better composite images. A composite image is one image made up of several other disparate images from a variety of sources. We used our digital camera, here, and the resolution of everything is 72 dpi with image width maxed at 725 pixels.

What a Great Poster!

I found this fabulous photo of a Laura Croft Tomb Raider poster. The trick will be to match the skin tones, head position and size with the head of the actress in the poster. There's just so much you can do manipulating pixels in the portrait above. Using the hue, saturation, or color manipulation tools can ruin the image or over saturate dark pixels. I've got a better plan.

It will require a more radical touch-up technique that will involve layering and underpainting. But like I said before, we have an excellent portrait to work with, and this will help a lot.

First, I take the picture of my student, Kate, and position it on the desktop near the target image file. This way I can match my colors, even draw color from portions of the poster.

Underpainting

The next step is make three layers in the portrait file. The top layer is my student's face, the layer of which I set from Normal to Multiply in the layer properties menu. This puts the face on a completely transparent layer. I can now use my paint sprayer and tint the layer beneath the face and model the color the match the poster. This is fun.

I have a layer of white beneath the layer I'm spray painting so I can see an accurate portrayal of what I'm doing. It's like painting from the inside out. But because I don't touch my top image layer, the details remain intact. I even oversprayed to show precisely how I layer the paint... I'll of course trim off that area around the head when I'm ready to move this image into the poster image.

The Eyes Have It

Okay, I'm ready to clip the image from this file into the poster file. But the highlights weren't bright enough. So now I go into the portrait layer (on top) and I use the dodge tool which lightens the highlights a little more. I also use the burn tool to darken that shadow around the neck below the chin. This gives the head even more dimension. And finally, The eyes. I whiten the whites and add a spectral highlight dot to each pupil. This gives the eyes a shiny natural look.

Of course I used the smudge tool to smooth out and blend the edges. But I'm very satisfied, and in fact surprised at the results. I used an outer glow on the head to replicate the backlight in the original poster, and it helps further blend the elements together almost seamlessly.

I used the eraser to remove the neck portion I didn't use (Angelina apparently has a demure neckline). The portrait could be a little darker, but heck, it's a caricature/parody for God's sake. I got lucky on the hairstyle, too. Kate's ponytail blends in perfectly with Angelina's braid. Color is perfect match.