3 Ways to Add Depth to Your Composite in Photoshop!

[Music] hi there this is amish from pixel perfect how you guys doing i hope you're having a bright day and if not know that you can always turn on the lights by the way i wanted to address something that you have been asking for a very long time a lot of you in the comments have been asking umesh how do i add depth to my composites one of the most common questions i get is that my composites look flat and they look as if it's a paper cut out and how do i blend them better well that's why we created this video in this video we'll talk about three techniques to unflat your composites in photoshop now keep in mind these are not the only techniques there are thousands of techniques to do so however you don't have to learn them all as you practice as you learn the concepts of photoshop you will discover them yourself i'm super excited to share with you these basic fundamental techniques so without any further ado let's get started [Music] back in the magical world the photoshop and if you wish to follow along using any of the photos used in this video check the links in the description also if you want to learn how to blur the background the best way and the precise ways to cut the subject out how to match the color of the subject with that of the background we have detailed videos about it and i've linked them all in the description so let's begin with this one so here in this document this is our background now using content of refill i have removed the subject i know it's not a very tidy job but then again it's going to be covered with this new subject first of all let's start with the masking now you can take all the time in the world to precisely do it for the pen tool and the hair brushes and all that but for right now let's simply click on select subject make sure the quick selection tool is selected and then at the top you will see the select subject button it does a pretty decent job another approach that you can take here that i take all the time and we are taking now is that just do a basic selection with select subject and if there are certain major corrections there make them and later on towards the end of the composite if this looks all right to you then go ahead and start refining the mask the advantage of this method is sometimes some new elements just don't work and when you spend all the time in the world to create the mask with the pen tool and it just doesn't end up working it hurts to try something else because you have already invested so much so now that the selection is ready just simply click on the mask button and it does a pretty good job let's start with our first technique to unflat the background and that is the regular matching of color and the lighting for that first we need to create check layers again if you don't know anything about czech layers do watch this video so i have an action for you check the links in the description to download this action just simply open up the actions panel if you don't see it go to window actions and now play this action link in the description to download it now this is going to create check layers for you saturation check layer and then luminance so many so first of all we need to match the brightness and contrast and the colors might distract us so let's turn on the luminance checklist and let's collapse the screw for now and just above the man let's create a curves adjustment layer you already might have guessed it didn't you click on this button to make sure whatever you do will be limited to the man and not the background let's zoom out and it's a good idea to zoom out a lot this allows you to look at the big picture if you zoom in too much some places even if you do a little adjustment here and there it might look alright but when you zoom out it gives you the big picture now let's adjust it i feel that he needs to go a little darker but the shadows are getting too dark so let's brighten them up also at the same time the highlights need to be a little brighter so let's brighten them up as well adjust it to your liking here's the before here's the after so much closer since this background already had a subject in it you can also compare it with the previous subject and see how she was so similarly you can have the similar amount of brightness for right now i'm just going to turn off all the check layers so now if i create a solid color adjustment layer let's choose 50 gray 808080 hex code hit ok and change the blend mode to luminosity as you can see we are seeing just the colors right now no brights or darks so we need to match most of the colors on him to that of the background for that we're going to create one more curves adjustment layer make sure you also limit it to the subject by clicking on this button now let's try the blue channel let's take it down let's see what it does see we are getting close but it's also turning green so let's go to the green channel and take that down as well much more similar let's try the red channel let's try taking it up and we are getting a tad bit closer you can also go back to the blue channel and you can also use the hand right here so click on the hand and you can just take this down take it up see what that does now accidentally we created two points you can just directly do it with the hand take this down there you go we are much much closer now when you turn the check layer off the jacket looks all right but his face is too much it's too saturated so let's simply desaturate it let's create a hue saturation adjustment layer and just also limit that to the subject and just decrease the saturation that's all we got to do also if you want to limit just the skin you can use the hand and click on that you can expand the target if you wish to make sure all of the skin tone areas are selected and then simply decrease the saturation let's go for minus 32 also select the mask press ctrl or command i we only want to limit it to the skin and the hair probably so paint those areas in white increase the flow and there you go wanna have a look at the before and after coloring so here's the before color is not matching at all here's the after so much close up now this desaturation of the skin that we did is this a technique well it is a technique but did you have to learn it no if you knew the concepts and if you see a problem that needs fixing you can just discover your own techniques that's why it's very essential to understand the concepts and the basic fundamentals of photoshop now let's apply an overall atmospheric coloring to the subject and this is regular procedure to do that let's make a copy of the background with the subject removed press control or command j place it at the top also limit it to the subject by holding the alt key or the option key and click on the line between these two layers now we need to blur it by going to filter blur and then gaussian blur blur it the most so that all of the details go away i've chosen thousand pixels hit okay now simply change the blend mode from normal to color now it's matching but the colors are just too much now what do you do when anything is too much in photoshop well you ask for help from your best friend and that is opacity so let's simply decrease the opacity to about 40 for now and it just does a fantastic job so here's the before colors are all here and there and here's the after everything is just so uniform now we are still in the process of matching lights and colors if you look at the original subject you would notice that she had some yellow highlights so let's go ahead and create some yellow highlights and we can do this under the atmospheric coloring so let's name this first now let's create a curves adjustment layer under it and we will just add yellows to the highlights by going to the blue channel keep in mind blue is the opposite of yellow so let's take the highlights down just like this so that the highlights have more yellows and make sure they're matching just zoom in to the areas like these they're matching now it's becoming too greenish so let's go to the green channel and take that down as well and as you do that they begin to match let's go back to the blue channel and make it more yellowish and if you do want you can go to the rgb channel make them a little brighter just slightly and there you have some yellow highlights looks wonderful doesn't it now we only wanted it in the highlights so double click on the right hand side of the layer hold the alt key or the option key click on the left slider of the underlying layer to break it apart to make the transition smoother and take one half all the way to the right hit okay that way it just gradually only applies in the highlights so here's the before it's applying in all of the places and it's just not looking right in the shadows as well and here's the after after we applied blendiff now overall here's the before here's the after see those yellow highlights that we just created before before they were right now they are yellow now overall let's do a saturation control because in all of these processes we have added a lot of colors so at the top let's create a hue saturation adjustment layer and also limit that to the subject and let's decrease it very slightly minus 8 looks alright and there we have something ready now it is high time that you might go ahead and take a break and then get back to this image because we might miss something we are humans so here as i look at it i feel that the skin needs to be a little more saturated so let's go to the layer where we desaturated it and just let's go to reds it is where it was and let's increase the saturation a little bit possibly minus 18 that looks alright and highlights need to be a little more yellowish i felt so let's go to this layer let's go to the blue channel and decrease it even more there you go and let's go to rgb and decrease it there as well so that we have more yellows in the highlights and it looks flat enough for our next techniques now before we move on to the next technique it's important that you zoom out take a look at the entire image and if you feel like you can make adjustments here and there this is the curves that we had added you can decrease or increase the opacity accordingly so i feel let's go for 80 for this one so little changes here and there might go a long way now it's time for us to move on to technique number two and that is making the lights interact have a look at this light right here it's not interacting with the subject have a look at these lines right here again it's not interacting there are many lights around so how do we make that interact simply use the inverse curve technique we have talked about it in this video so let's create as the name suggests let's create a curves adjustment layer at the top and now instead of making the highlights brighter we're going to make the shadows brighter to start we need to match this area with that of the highlight that is behind the subject so first of all let's make it brighter again limited to the subject by clicking to this button this much bright all right but it also needs to be yellow let's go to the blue channel and let's go the opposite direction also it gets a little green so let's decrease the greens as well a little bit very slightly let's go back to the blue channel let's go back to rgb and we can start with that so let's select the mask here press ctrl or command i take the brush decrease the flow to about 10 percent you can even go lower if you wish to i'm just going to do a very quick job here so just start painting here with white again the selection is not very proper you can take all the time in the world to do a better selection later on but for right now just simply paint in these areas to add highlights now here take a look at this here's the before here's the after look at that look at how wonderfully it's interacting now you can go ahead and make changes to it you can make it darker lighter that's up to you so i can make it a little more darker and then go to the blue channel decrease it even more to add more yellow then we can go to the green channel play with it to see what that does so it makes it more magenta so let's keep it very slight you can also just paint yellow over it if you wish to so you can always create a new layer take the brush just sample this color right here and start painting here again limit that to the subject lots of ways again i told you there are thousands of techniques to do this okay as you have painted you can always try different blend modes like screen so let's choose screen screen is the blend mode that brightens keep in mind there's no restriction whatever blend mode you want to use sometimes normal works if you want to show the colors sometimes screen works if you want to be accurate with brightening it so different areas different blend modes so whatever looks good for you is the right technique for you for that image now let's do the same for the other areas and you can also use curves with the inverse curve technique let's brighten the shadows let's add a little yellow like this also limit it to the subject and then let's take the green down there we go that looks like it now select a mask press ctrl or command i now you can start painting in areas with white it's too much of course let's go for five percent flow now i know the selection is not proper here bear with me we can always improve that later here we have a bright light let's increase the flow to 20 percent and just paint over the mask here for certain areas again there can be exceptions you might have to use different techniques the goal here is to simply have the lights interact with that of the subject that's it most of them are interacting again this light is too yellowish so i'm going to create a new layer limit that just the subject now just sample this and paint right here what's the big deal similarly in this place just take a sample and paint right here there you go that's done similarly take a sample and paint there's one more technique you can use you can simply create a curves adjustment layer it doesn't have to be anything inverse let's just increase the brightness again we want the highlights to be yellowish so let's go to blue take it down like that you can also take the highlights down like that it's becoming greenish so let's go to green and take that down wow that's nice now again limit that to the subject select the mask press ctrl or command i and then just only in the highlight areas you can take the brush and start painting with white and you can also go with a lower flow here like four or five and start painting over these highlight areas have a look at the before and after where we made the lights interact so here's the before the lights are not interacting at all here is the after that's how you add a little bit of depth the third and the final technique here is simply depth of field right now the background is blurred it's a very shallow depth of field but for some reason the edges of the subject are also very very sharp that doesn't have to be if you look at the original image if i just turn off this mask you would notice by the way if i just keep this turned on you would notice the edges are blurred a little bit as well here and there we just need to exaggerate that a little bit so let's turn everything back on turn on the mask here's how to do it now select the man layer and along with the mask turn that into a smart object by right clicking on it and choosing convert to smart object so that you can add blur to the edges without having the complication of the masks now let's go to filter and then blur gallery field blur field blur allows you to add multiple points of blur that's what i love about it for all the insides like these eyes we want the blur to be zero inside zero this area these two areas zero so let's add all the zero points first after you have done that simply start adding points and by default it's going to add a 15 pixel blur so you don't have to decrease or increase the blur just bring it closer to have more blur and take it away to have less blur so let's add one more here let's add a little bit here so that adds a little blur here a little [Music] here there you go just a little blur goes a long way hit okay now see how wonderfully it's blending for that of the background with the background blur it's blending so much better look here see it's just so much better now if you feel that these areas have too much blur fill you can just go back again by double clicking on blur gallery and just go to those points and take them a little far away that's it hit okay once you're satisfied now there you go it is done now if you do want it you can just go ahead and work on the mask by double clicking on the man and then this opens up the mask and then you can improve the mask and save it and get back to the image now as a last step now this is not a part of the technique all the three techniques are done this is just a finishing touch and we do that all the time with most of the composites and that is just adding an overall something to bring everything together it's a global effect all right so let's apply the easiest here is simply applying a color lookup table and let's go with something yellowish so edgy amber i know is something that's going to give a yellowish warmth kind of uniform color here but again that's too much let's go for a different opacity lower opacity about 32 is good now on top of that you can have something to dim it down dim down all the colors and that is let's go for color lookup and let's go to candlelight that does dim down a lot of yellows now for that let's just have an opacity of about 22. so there you go here's the final before and here is the after so that's how to add depth to your composite on flatter composite and blend the elements better now keep in mind there are three basic techniques that we discussed to do that technique number one is doing the general matching of color and the lighting and we have covered it previously a lot of times and it is simply just adding curves to match the brightness adding another curves to match the color hue saturation to adjust the colors adding an atmospheric coloring on top of everything and then just simple adjusting here and there technique number two is making the lights in the background interact with that of the subject now you can use the inverse curve technique you can just simply sample a color and paint over the subject there's no rules do it however you want it you just have to make the lights in the background interact with that of the subject technique number three is depth of field if the background is not blurred try to add a little bit blur to it if it is blurred try to make sure that if there's a shallow depth of field it also reflects on the subject that's all there is i hope you enjoyed this video i hope you learned something and if you did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any of the future tips tricks or tutorials i would like to take this moment thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting pixel perfect on patreon and helping keep pixen perfect free for everybody forever i'll see you in the next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 439,672

Keywords: compositing, add depth to composite, create light, depth of field, background blur, adobe, photoshop, tutorial, match color, blend images in photoshop, change background, masking, advanced photoshop tutorials, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: YqQ6yxclfWA

Length: 19min 36sec (1176 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021