Easily Blend Subject & Reflections Using Blend Modes in Photoshop

hi there this is a mission pics in perfect welcome to another episode of matching the subject with the background and in this tutorial what are we gonna do we gonna use blending modes to extensively match the subject with that of the background and not only the subject but also we're gonna match the reflection as well it's gonna be a super cool tutorial and also along the way we're gonna learn a couple of dodging and burning tricks to match the lighting so without any further ado it's gonna be fun let's get started [Music] so here we are photoshopping again as always if you want to go ahead and download any of the photos shown in the tutorial check the links in the description you might want to follow along alright so let's have a look at the subject so here we have the subject and the background both of them are open in Photoshop keep in mind that the choosing of the subject and the background have been done strategically you cannot just select any subject and any background you have to be strategic about it have a look the subject already has a reflection right of course you can create reflection using waves and other filters in Photoshop but then again if it has the original reflection amazing alright let's have a look at this it also has similar patterns right try to choose a background that matches the subject at least a little bit if you're shooting your own backgrounds make sure that the light conditions and the color tint etc are at least similar if not the same alright in this example as you can see the light conditions might not be matching that well but as you can see the reflection is intact and all the other aspects of it are matching with this a little bit of course we need to make it a little warm but we can do that very easily alright so to make a selection there are tons of ways of course we need to make a selection and place it over this alright so first of all let's make a selection of the subject but before that let's make a copy of the background layer press ctrl or command J to make a copy and you can name this subject if you want to so subject just like that alright now turn off the background lift for now we don't need it select any selection tool the rectangular marquee tool would do or anything lasso tool whatever and click on select and mask if you're using an earlier version of Photoshop like cs6 you might not have the facility of selecting masks at in that case what you can do you can manually do it by using the quick selection tool and probably if you have refine edge in the later version versions of Photoshop then you can choose refine edge and work with it however once inside a selected mask anything beyond Photoshop CC 2015 point 5 you will have selected masks there is this tool called select subject and select subject is available in the latest version of Photoshop CC 2018 which is amazing with just one click it selects the subjects but if you don't have that you can always use the quick selection tool and the refine edge - I'm just gonna click select subject and Photoshop does all its calculation the AI and all those Adobe sensei and makes an amazing selection of the subject as you can see it is an amazing selection let's zoom in quite a bit and let's change the view to on black right now what happens is if the opacity is zero everything shows up irrespective of whatever you have selected now if the opacity is at 100 only the selected areas shows up and everything else is black that's why the view is on black all right let's decrease the opacity to see which areas are missing or which areas have to be removed as you can see inside here we need to just make it better here it's not good enough so we can choose the quick selection tool and start adding in these areas a little bit just like that and we have to improve the selection also what you can use you can use the brush tool here the selection is OK everything looks ok just at the top these selections we need to work on them so what we can do we can choose this - called the brush tool and with the plus we can add to the selection let's make the brush a little smaller just like that and you can just paint in just like that and work on it it's not difficult to do also you can use the pen tool there are tons of ways of making a selection you can check out this channel for a lot of ways there's a complete playlist on making selections so I'll just link it up in the description alright there we go it's basically a playlist on masking it's important now if you want to erase it you would have to hold the option key or the Alt key and this turns into - let me just make the brush bigger so that you can see now it's + if I hold the Alt key or the option key it turns into - lick it here as soon as I hold the option key it turns - otherwise if I paint over it it's a plus right have a look let's make the brush smaller and then you can easily refine the selection here it's okay now here you might want to refine now as you can see there's a little bit of pixelation it's not actually pixelation it's a little bit of jittery kind of fetch so to solve that we can increase this smoothness just like this it tries to solve it and then it can increase the feather a little bit and after that just a little bit and then you can increase the contrast let's increase the contrast just like that and let's see see how refined it is now you might want to choose the brush and just make these edges better you can also hit okay and do that later in the mask I'm just hit okay hitting okay and then let's have a look we have the selection also what about the hair what about the hair now once you have refined all of this here's what we do we create a solid color adjustment layer let's choose black and put it behind the subject just to see which areas are missing and then just zoom in and simply you can take the brush make sure the foreground color is black okay again what is the concept of mask black Heights and white shows up let's go to the mask again the foreground color turned white press X to toggle between the foreground and the background make sure it is black again and with the brush selected let's make the brush a little smaller just like that better and then just simply paint black here you can make it a little harder by dragging down and there you can just continue like that but what about the hair people do that but what about the hair let's bring it back to the hair let's make it fit it to the screen what about the hair to do the hair you can again go to selected mask or while you're in the selected mask you can work at it select any selection tool selected mask now inside of selection mask here is the refine edge tool let's zoom in quite a bit make the brush a little bigger and just simply paint on these areas and Photoshop will take care of the rest all right just like that now the selection is always the hardest part everything else is super fun now it has done a pretty good job now what you can do you can take the brush and just refine it or refine it outside of selected masks so I'm gonna add these areas and probably I'll subtract these now once you're ready always make sure that the output is let's scroll down layer mask and hit OK and it just updates now I've done already all the hard work so you can take your time do this at your own pace but I've already done it let me just open that up the same thing alright let me just open that up I have those in PSD files I make a folder everything organized and stuff alright let's open that up ok let's close it don't save or here as you can see I've done the exact same thing I have deleted the solid color adjustment let the black thing and we have the background and we have the subject with that of the mask now at this point I would highly suggest that you can work this into a smart object so that you can apply any filter and change the values and it's gonna be non-destructive you can just make it bigger smaller it won't lewis details alright so to do that you would go to filter convert for Smart Filters make sure that layer is selected convert for Smart Filters and hit OK now this is a smart object you can just unlock the background layer if you want to and you can name this reflection because we're gonna use this for reflection all right now turn this into a smart object as well if you can of course we can right click and go to convert to smart object here's one more way of converting into a smart object that was other way and this is one more way now you know two ways now select both of the layers by holding the command or the control alright drag it and drop it over this background alright now let's make a group of both of these this is getting a little bit confusing ctrl or command G ctrl or command D and now hold the shift key to make it smaller now you can use the horizon of this as a reference and line it up but it's not always right because the angle of the camera how far is the camera from the subject all that matters but you can use that as a reference a little bit of reference alright it's okay if you do so all right it looks okay now once you're satisfied with this you can hit enter now since we're gonna be treating the subject and the background differently I think making it in a group is a bad idea so let's ungroup it now let's learn how to ungroup it so right click here and ungroup layers alright it looks pretty good now we can turn off the reflection as of now let's first of all work on the reflection okay now in the reflection we just want the areas of the reflection and nothing else so select this layer and create a mask and we can hide everything else you can take the brush make the brush a little bigger make sure the foreground color is black and you can hide these areas or what you can also do let's go back let's invert the mask select the mask press ctrl or command I and with the brush just paint in with white and show up just the reflection a little bit more is okay no problem at all now you wanna hide the bright areas from the reflection so that just a reflection shows up not the white border how can we do that simple blend if def will click on the right hand side of the left and then you wanna hide the bright areas of this layer which is the reflection layer from the reflection layer so we move the slider of this layer because we want to hide the bright areas of this layer which is the reflection layer from the reflection reflection layer all right let's take the slider from right to left done easy isn't it now once it goes away to make the transition smoother you can hold the option key or the Alt key and click on it and then make it smoother just like that but to me it looks pretty fine I'll make it something like that it's okay now I want you to have a look at the background look at this surface there is a reflection there is a reflection but between these there are these slides or whatever you call it I don't know what to call it but then again what happens in these areas why is it not reflecting it is because in these areas the surface tilted a little bit and it's reflecting the sky so it's not reflecting all of these buildings so what about those areas those areas are a little darker so what if we want to hide this reflection from the dark areas of the background layer or we wanna hide the dark areas of this background layer from this layer now the background layer is what it is the underlying layer so we will take the slider of the underlying layer from left to right just like that let's see what happens Wow now that really looks amazing hold the alt or option click on it to make it smoother of course we need to do that all right something like this much better hit okay now still it's it's kind of not matching let's try different blend modes what about say multiply bingo it looks amazing isn't it now it's time for us to match this subject okay lift zoom in and let's try to match the subject have a look already the feet is not matching see it's all white and it should be red ish right just like the surface how about trying different blend modes here let's try multiply and it is beginning to match amazingly but the thing is every part of the subject has been affected we just wanted to work on the feet but let's have a look at it let's have a close look at it let's zoom out as you can see the subject is amazingly matching except for the fact that the background is a little see-through the subject has become a little see-through and the thing is the background is very well-defined only if we could have just the colors of the background and not the definition and how to do that what if we blur the background in just those areas of the subject doesn't that sound interesting let's try to do it so make a copy of the background layer we don't want to edit the original control or command J and you can name this whatever you want to subject background subject or subject color or review like alright make sure the whole of the background is copied not just that area now we need to make a selection of just the subject area in that so all you need to do is to hold the ctrl or command click on the subject thumbnail now once the selection is active in the subject color layer you would go to filter blur and then Gaussian blur now let's keep on increasing the value see which one is more seamless so for me I guess this value seems to be okay 76 is pretty okay and hit OK now still we have the blues here what to do now with the selections still active you would select the brush make sure in the eyedropper tool the sample is all layers and the sample size is something like 11 by 11 so that it just doesn't take a sample from one single point it takes an average of 11 by 11 all right now come back to the brush hold the alt or the option key let's take a sample from here and maybe make the brush a little bigger and start painting over there opacity and flow 800 I think it's too much it's too much let's go back control or command set and then what I'm gonna do what I'm planning to do is decreasing the flow a little bit 18% that's fine let's take a sample and paint take a sample from here and paint in here it looks much more better decrease the opacity here sorry the flow even more 6% let's take a sample from here and try to paint here let's see a little bit on the left-hand side let it be a little bluish that's fine in fact let's take a sample of the blues and paint on the left-hand side a little bit because the light is coming from the right hand side we can take a sample from this and maybe paint a little bit here and there and it looks pretty okay pretty fine pretty awesome press ctrl or command D to deselect that let's zoom out and let's have a look doesn't the head look amazing wasn't it so simple it was very simple now to match it even more you can do a little bit of dodging and burning and all that stuff now what I supposed to do the darts are not very dark so let's make a copy of the subject layer with multiply blend mode ctrl or command J it's a little better so what I'm gonna do I'm going to decrease the opacity let's see 45 looks to be fine now I didn't want to darken the bright areas so you wanna hide it from the bright areas double click on the right hand side of the layer and we can take the slider of the underlying layer from right to left to hide it from the bright areas just like this or you can also do it this layer because it's the same I hold the alt or option click on it to make it smoother and you can just make sure that only the dark areas are affected now once you're satisfied with it okay I would work on it a little bit more and there you go it works so whoo much more better now what you can do you can do a little bit of dodging and burning very easily so let's brighten up the bright areas so click on the adjustment layer icon and we're gonna choose curves now inside of the curves we just wanted to affect the subject how did you do that well you might think all right let's just create a clipping mask by clicking on here so that just limits to subject and subject copy and all of that but that is just not gonna work it's just gonna make it as bright as the background not brighter than that wine because the blend mode is multiply so we need to create a separate curves adjustment layer with the mask of the subject so let's delete it to do that we need to have an active selection of the subject so hold the ctrl or command click on the subject it makes a selection around the subject now what you would do click on the adjustment layer click on curves now the curves comes with a mask off the subject now if you brighten it it only happens in the subject area so we just wanted to brighten the right side so just like that and something like this and zoom out a little bit yeah let's make a group now inside that group you're gonna have the curves so that we can have two masks for just one layer control or command G now for the group we would create a negative mask hold the alt or the option key click on the mask button this creates a negative mask now we have two masks have a look the subject mask and the group mask now only the intersection of the whites of both of those masks will show up sounds confusing I know it does just just keep following alright now let me show you what it means if I take the brush if white is my foreground color if I paint and let's increase the flow all the way to hundred if I paint it just is limited to the subject even if I'm painting outside just is limited to the subject because inside the group the subject is the masks make sense now let's go back let's do it all over again let's go forward alright let's take the brush make sure the foreground color is white make sure the mask is selected foreground color white and we're gonna paint in just like that but it's too much let's decrease the flow let's go back let's decrease the flow to somewhere around 10% 6% that's fine let's zoom in a little bit and start painting on the right hand side maybe we'll add a little bit of light to the face and make it look bigger painting like that let's increase the flow a little bit painting a little bit there looks kinda better right alright now what we can also do we can again control the amount of brightness let's give it a little all right looks pretty good now we can change the amount of curve if we want to so let's click on the symbol of the adjustment set and then you can just control the amount from here just like that now let's zoom in and I think I've painted here a little extra so let's make the brush a little smaller with black and I'm gonna paint it to remove it and it looks awesome all right let's control it even more all right I think we don't need to make things darker on the left-hand side but you can if you want to but we have taken care of it with this you can just control this as well I think for this 35 would be a good number now let's zoom out if you want you can also create a burning layer so right now we were dodging to do that you would again have to make a selection of the subject active selection hold the ctrl or command click on the thumbnail to have an active selection create a curves adjustments there all right and this time what you would do you would take it down if you want to a little bit just a little bit not too much ctrl or command G and then hold the alt or the option key click on the mask button creates a negative mask again you know what to do take the brush foreground color white press X toggle between the foreground and the background make sure brush is selected make the brush a little bigger and then paint in on the left hand side if you want to a little bit I think that area is taken care of and that's how we can't take care of this now also what you can do is as you can see the shadows are a little bluish so we can just open this up and maybe make it a little less darker and go to the blues and maybe increase the blues a little bit but I don't think that's a great idea because we already paint it a little bit of Blues all right so maybe decrease the opacity it's too much all right 60% is fine and we are good to go I think we are pretty much done with the composite let's zoom out and have a look at this point what I would suggest you to do is to go take a break take a break do not post it I no you might have the temptation to post a thing just after you have done it it looks amazing it looks awesome Eve might fun a post this don't do that go back take a break have a cup of coffee if you have coffee or do whatever you want watch a movie or maybe have a look at it a couple of days later I would highly suggest that then you would find some faults that you wouldn't have if you are just continuing at the same moment so here is the final result I might have done a little bit of tweaking and dodging and burning and the curves but the process is exactly the same so that's how you use blend modes to match not only the subject but also their reflection due to the background now if blend modes do not work you can watch the other tutorials on matching the subject with the background all of them are listed in the description below there are a zillion ways I think it's a million I'm overextending myself anyway there are a ton of ways to do things in Photoshop and not every way will work for every image keep that in mind right so for this image let's do a quick little recap first of all what we did we made a selection of the subject alright and then we created a mask we turned the subject into what a smart object we also had the background we named it reflection and turned that into a smart object as well we brought both of them here the subject and the reflection now in the reflection we just kept the reflection area and changed the blend mode to multiply using blend if we hit the bright areas of the reflection layer from the reflection layer and also we hit the dark areas of the background layer from the reflection layer by using the slider in the underlying layer section of the blender then the subject we turned the blend mode in to multiply and it worked it might not work for you but for this image it just worked sometimes when the subject is very bright and the background is brighter multiply works amazingly you need to play with this now when we change the blend mode to multiply the background was very well defined so we made a copy of the background and for just that area we blurred it out because it was taking color from the background so the color was already matched now we had to match what the lightness the brightness we made a copy of the subject layer to add an extra darkness to it and then we did a little bit of dodging and a little bit of burning and we were pretty much good to go so that's pretty much it for this tutorial special thanks to Chad Molly and hope from Wacom for sending me this amazing Wacom Intuos Pro and this is the paper edition I totally love it and the great thing about it is it's very slim it's totally of amazingly designed and also at the same time it works why a Bluetooth needs no cables nothing not even those extenders even if you have Wireless Wacom Intuos Pro it needs those USB to be inserted in your computer but this doesn't need it works on Bluetooth isn't it amazing so thank you again Chad Molly and hope from Wacom also this show is made possible by these amazingly nice people who support this channel on patreon and help me keep fixing perfect free for everybody forever if you like this video please make sure to subscribe and also don't forget to ring the bell so that you don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials thank you so much for all the support thank you so much for watching I'll see you guys - frontera and stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 119,669

Rating: 4.9493365 out of 5

Keywords: blend images in photoshop, match reflection, change backgrond, compositing, reflection photoshop tutorial, blend modes photoshop, color match in photoshop, curves, blend-if, adjustment layers, photoshop tutorial, match subject with background, photo manipulation tutorial, adobe, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: pSRRecMjJWw

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 20 2018