ART176_tut_pshop

64

Shotopop Anchored in the

Docklands, Shotopop’s artillery includes the visualisation, execution and direction of both tactile and digital illustration and design for print, interactive and motion graphics. See what they play with at www.shotopop.com

ART176.tut_pshop 64 11/5/10 1:48:1 pm

Technique 65

02 Zoom in to about 500% and draw around the figure using the Pen or Lasso tools. Once you have a selection, Right-click and feather it, setting Feather to 1px. Right-click again and choose Layer Via Copy. Don’t worry too much about getting every strand of hair – we’ll fix this later.

01 Find a nice picture of your subject. Either take one yourself or grab one from the numerous inexpensive stock photography sites that you can find online. We chose this floating girl, as it’s a nice image to play with and we can add some surreality.

03 Place the cut out subject and original image in a new, bigger composition and recreate the background using a series of gradient fills and a large, soft brush. You can use a few layers to achieve the right tones. Recreate any shadows that the subject might be casting.

Photoshop CS4 or later

Fake a studio shoot in Photoshop

If you don’t have the budget for studio photography, fake it. Shotopop shows you how

When you don’t have the time or budget to source props, book a studio, get a model and conduct a leisurely photo shoot, the chances are you’re going to have to fake it. In some instances you might even need to fake an outcome to sell the idea of a photo shoot to a client in the first place. What a roundabout industry we work in... It’s easy to make up a nice image with just a roll of paper to use as a small infinity curve, a few props lying around the studio, a camera and some Photoshop magic. In this tutorial we’ll show you how it’s done. If you’ve got the time, you can build a few small props to add a bit of personality to the image, but if you’re in a rush just grab a roll of paper and a desk lamp, source a few random props, take a picture of your pretty friend and you’re ready to go.

Shotopop Anchored in the

Docklands, Shotopop’s artillery includes the visualisation, execution and direction of both tactile and digital illustration and design for print, interactive and motion graphics. See what they play with at www.shotopop.com

Time needed 8 hours

Skills Basic

photography and lighting

Etching Compositing Object

manipulation

04 Now let’s get some finer hair detail back. Using the Lasso tool, make a rough selection around all the missing hair in the original picture and copy it to a new layer. With a soft Eraser tool, erase from the layer edge inwards until you’re close to the hair.

Subscribe at www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/coa/p090 Computer Arts July 2010

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66

10 We want to add an infi nity curve on stands as another prop, but can’t get far back enough to photograph the whole thing, so again we take separate pictures of the elements to combine them later.

11 Using layers and shadow layers on Multiply, just like the fans, we start constructing the curve behind the subject. It’s important to play with the brightness, hue, saturation and contrast of each element to keep them all looking like they belong in the same environment.

08 We added some blowing hair to the composition to link in with the fans. Hair on a white background with the blend mode set to Multiply works well. You can liquify the edges of the subject to hide the line between the different sets of hair.

07 Place your cut-out props (in our case, two fans) in the composition, along with a second, rough selection that includes shadows. Now set the blend mode of the shadow layer to Multiply and tweak the levels until you see the shadows clearly.

09 Using the Lasso tool, make a selection that covers the area where the two sets of hair blend. Colour it the same as the hair, blur it slightly and put it below the two layers with hair. The two layers should now blend together much more smoothly.

06 Create a small infi nity curve on which to photograph your prop by using a roll of paper or sticking a large piece of paper to the wall with Blu-Tack. Light it with a desk lamp and a daylight bulb, and take the photos. Trace around the prop as in Step 2.

Computer Arts July 2010 www.computerarts.co.uk

05 This layer won’t match your new background colours exactly, so tweak it using fl at colours and Levels and Contrast Adjustment Layers as clipping masks over the hair layer. Now put all these layers behind the subject and presto: lots of fi ne hair detail.

ART176.tut_pshop 66 11/5/10 1:48:9 pm

Subscribe at www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/coa/p090 Computer Arts July 2010

Technique 67 Fake a studio shot

12 The roll of paper looks a bit short, so we duplicate the layer, cut the top off one and the bottom off the other, and move them away from each other. Use the Warp tool to make sure the edges meet, and a soft setting on the Eraser tool to blend the two together.

13 Next, cut each stand into three, just below the extender joints. Move the three layers apart until the pole is long enough. Now select a straight bit of the pole, with no horizontal features, to stretch using the Transform tool. Stretch it until the pole section reaches the next one.

15 Time for more props! To add to the gravity-defying feel, we include an umbrella (as before: photograph, cut out, add). The umbrella looked a bit dull, so we light part of it by layering it with a soft selection and pushing the levels a bit.

17 We’re almost there. It’s important for all the elements to share the same global features. To achieve this, we add two Adjustment Layers over everything: one Curves layer, selecting Dark, Mid and Light tones with the colour picker, and one Colour Balance layer, pushing back the mid-tone cyan.

14 Add the top pole parts by selecting them from the original photo of the paper curve. Stretch a part with no vertical features until the section of the top pole is long enough to meet with the stands. Now you can just extend the stand tops to complete the structure.

16 The last of our gravity-defying props is a button. Cut one from foam board and photograph it from different angles. Cut them out and add them to the composition. Because these have been photographed from quite close up they might appear too crisp, so you may want to blur them a bit.

18 As a last step, you can duplicate all the layers, flatten them and add very slight noise over everything, to pull it all together. Adding one per cent of monochromatic uniform noise should work just fine. And that’s it.

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