Lesson Objectives
Overview
In this lesson, we will discuss how to combine multiple photographs to create visually coherent and realistic montages. This is a simple first step, as we expand our practice and complexity it is important to focus in on details on every layer we combine and at every step. Many of the amazing work we see created digitally starts with the combining of and careful manipulation of images so they all fit together perfectly. The surrealist artist, Erik Johansson, starts with storyboarding his concept first, shooting many photos, and combining them in different ways.
Here’s a video of some of his behind the scenes process.
Environmental Factors That Contribute to Visual Understanding
Evaluating Images
Noise in an image a result of pixel variability. It is another term for ‘grain’ in darkroom photography. It can also sometimes refer to artifacts that occur with low-resolution jpg images, which is generally not a desirable element. Sometimes we add noise to images for a specific effect but usually it is caused by either a high ISO in your camera or quality of your camera sensor.
Have a look at the photo below with and without noise (use the slider). You could say that the noisy version has more atmosphere, feels older, feels more remote or more graphic. It is communicating a slightly different meaning than the crisp version that has a more realistic and immediate feel. When you put it side by side with the less noisy image, it seems wrong, they don’t fit together at all. That’s true if you are compositing multiple images as well, they need to work together.
Here is a blurry version.
In this example, lighting also plays a huge factor in the image. The light is strong from the side, casting deep shadows.
Before you start to composite multiple images, you will need to evaluate lighting and shadow in order to make it more realistic. The two images below have very different lighting directions and strength. The sofa has two light sources and the one on the right is stronger than the left. The dog has one light source and strong on the left. How could you put the dog on the sofa and have it look natural?
You would need to balance the light on the dog somewhat by decreasing the light on the left and increasing the light on the right side. Of course proper selection, sizing and placement would be important. You would also need to get rid of the grass that is on the front of the dog, perhaps with the clone stamp tool. The dog’s paws are buried in the grass so you may need to make it look like the dog is sitting behind one of the pillows to cover that up. You could select a pillow and isolate it on it’s own layer and tuck the dog’s paws in behind it potentially.
You will also need to evaluate reflection.
Placing this unicorn into the Yellowstone National Park scene at the waters edge, for example would not only require adjustments to the color and light that falls on the unicorn, but also a matching reflection.
Perspective is also tricky to perfect to make realistic montages. We’ll do more with perspective in a later lesson. For now, try to think about whether or not the element is placed into the scene where it is not floating in space, appears too large or small, or distorted in relation to it’s environment.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Apart from the fact that hedgehogs don’t generally go to the beach, the lighting and the image grain is wrong. The hedgehog is too light, especially underneath, relative to the background image. The background is slightly blurry and it may have a bit more noise to it.
Here, the image is somewhat improved and the hedgehog seems to blend into the background a bit more through better placement, lighting adjustments, shadow, noise, and blur. Through a Curves Adjustment Layer to bring down the contrast of the hog, a subtle shadow layer, and careful use of the Burn Tool, the image is on it’s way to looking more natural.
Compositing Tips
Order of Operations
- Resize or transform first
- Add noise, blur, color transformations later
- Sharpen last
Tool Tips
Additional Resources & Activities
Further Reference
Evaluating Images
Noise in an image a result of pixel variability. It is another term for ‘grain’ in darkroom photography. It can also sometimes refer to artifacts that occur with low-resolution jpg images, which is generally not a desirable element. Sometimes we add noise to images for a specific effect but usually it is caused by either a high ISO in your camera or quality of your camera sensor.
Have a look at the photo below with and without noise (use the slider). You could say that the noisy version has more atmosphere, feels older, feels more remote or more graphic. It is communicating a slightly different meaning than the crisp version that has a more realistic and immediate feel. When you put it side by side with the less noisy image, it seems wrong, they don’t fit together at all. That’s true if you are compositing multiple images as well, they need to work together.
Here is a blurry version.
In this example, lighting also plays a huge factor in the image. The light is strong from the side, casting deep shadows.
Before you start to composite multiple images, you will need to evaluate lighting and shadow in order to make it more realistic. The two images below have very different lighting directions and strength. The sofa has two light sources and the one on the right is stronger than the left. The dog has one light source and strong on the left. How could you put the dog on the sofa and have it look natural?
You would need to balance the light on the dog somewhat by decreasing the light on the left and increasing the light on the right side. Of course proper selection, sizing and placement would be important. You would also need to get rid of the grass that is on the front of the dog, perhaps with the clone stamp tool. The dog’s paws are buried in the grass so you may need to make it look like the dog is sitting behind one of the pillows to cover that up. You could select a pillow and isolate it on it’s own layer and tuck the dog’s paws in behind it potentially.
You will also need to evaluate reflection.
Placing this unicorn into the Yellowstone National Park scene at the waters edge, for example would not only require adjustments to the color and light that falls on the unicorn, but also a matching reflection.
Perspective is also tricky to perfect to make realistic montages. We’ll do more with perspective in a later lesson. For now, try to think about whether or not the element is placed into the scene where it is not floating in space, appears too large or small, or distorted in relation to it’s environment.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Apart from the fact that hedgehogs don’t generally go to the beach, the lighting and the image grain is wrong. The hedgehog is too light, especially underneath, relative to the background image. The background is slightly blurry and it may have a bit more noise to it.
Here, the image is somewhat improved and the hedgehog seems to blend into the background a bit more through better placement, lighting adjustments, shadow, noise, and blur. Through a Curves Adjustment Layer to bring down the contrast of the hog, a subtle shadow layer, and careful use of the Burn Tool, the image is on it’s way to looking more natural.
Compositing Tips
Order of Operations
- Resize or transform first
- Add noise, blur, color transformations later
- Sharpen last
Tool Tips
Additional Resources & Activities
Further Reference
Further Reference
HOMEWORK
Exercise
In this exercise, you are asked to pay attention to visual characteristics of multiple photographs and try to match them to create a coherent and realistic image.
Choose and download one background image (click on thumbnail below to open the full image, then save to your computer):
Choose and download one animal image:
Open both images in Photoshop – the background and the animal. Copy the animal image onto a new layer above the background image. (See tool tip video above for how to do this.)
Do not alter the background image (no change in brightness, contrast, no filters).
On the animal layer, select the animal and click on Select and Mask interface to refine your selection edges. See the tool tips above for how to refine your selections carefully. Try to get a clean selection without extra pixels on the edge while preserving details. Save mask to a new layer. You will be using this layer for further adjustments.
Make the adjustments discussed in the lecture video to make the foreground (animal) appear to be there when the background photo was taken.
Save your file as Photoshop file with layers and share with your instructor via your Google Drive folder for class.
Don’t merge layers or flatten the layers.
Don’t reduce the size of the original images below 1200 x 1200 pixels.
Higher points will be given to final images with more visually coherent and realistic appearance. Dirty or too simple edges around the foreground layer will make the image less realistic, so try to do your best when you are selecting the animal before masking.
Journal - Blog Post
Discussion
In this exercise, you are asked to pay attention to visual characteristics of multiple photographs and try to match them to create a coherent and realistic image.
Choose and download one background image (click on thumbnail below to open the full image, then save to your computer):
Choose and download one animal image:
Open both images in Photoshop – the background and the animal. Copy the animal image onto a new layer above the background image. (See tool tip video above for how to do this.)
Do not alter the background image (no change in brightness, contrast, no filters).
On the animal layer, select the animal and click on Select and Mask interface to refine your selection edges. See the tool tips above for how to refine your selections carefully. Try to get a clean selection without extra pixels on the edge while preserving details. Save mask to a new layer. You will be using this layer for further adjustments.
Make the adjustments discussed in the lecture video to make the foreground (animal) appear to be there when the background photo was taken.
Save your file as Photoshop file with layers and share with your instructor via your Google Drive folder for class.
Don’t merge layers or flatten the layers.
Don’t reduce the size of the original images below 1200 x 1200 pixels.
Higher points will be given to final images with more visually coherent and realistic appearance. Dirty or too simple edges around the foreground layer will make the image less realistic, so try to do your best when you are selecting the animal before masking.
Journal - Blog Post
Discussion