How to Blend Images and Create a Composite in Photoshop

hi there this is a mission pics in perfect and today we can learn how to create a composite match a composite take this car and put it in a completely new background it's gonna be fun so without any further ado let's get started so here we on Photoshop me feel good and download these photos check the links in the description so the first thing that we always have to do when it comes to creating composites is choosing the right image so I took some time and chose these two images I'll tell you why let's analyze the light have a look at the light of this image how does the light look like it looks like the image was taken somewhere earlier in the morning or later in the day maybe in the evening and there's still a little bit of sunlight left okay and that's why we have a hard-edged shadow but most of it is soft have a look at the trees trees have no shadow at all they're very very soft so overall it's a soft light volume because of the trees in this image as well the light is soft so what is hard light and soft light hard light produces hard shadows and soft light produces soft shadows what do we mean by that if you go out 12:00 noon ok Sun is right at the top of your head it's not a cloudy day it's scorching Sun how's the shadow look like look down how does the shadow look like it's a hard-edged shadow dark shadow and that's when we can say that Sun is throwing off hard light similarly if you go out in a cloudy day overcast weather how does the shadow look like it's very very soft sometimes it's very difficult to even see it right that's when we can say the sky is throwing off soft light and that's all the differences so if you have a look at it there's no harsh shadows so the light is very very soft in this case as well in this case as well the light is soft so the first thing to look for when creating your own images or choosing images for a composite is the direction of light make sure the direction of light in both of the images is the same or can be altered maybe the direction of light in the second image is from the left so you can just flip it okay if the direction of light is at the top it becomes difficult to flip so make sure that the direction of light can be matched in these cases the light is so soft so the direction of light really doesn't matter it will match secondly look at how hard or soft the light is in both the images as we just saw the light very soft so we don't have to care about that and the third thing that you always have to keep in mind is the influence of the environment on the object in the first image as you saw we have the car and the trees and on the car we have the reflection of the trees so when we place the car on the second background in the second background as well we have trees and that is intentional that's why we chose it so that we already have a reflection of trees on the car and if we put it on a street that will look strange if you put it beside buildings it will look very strange so make sure that the environment has to be kept into consideration other things like color and the brightness can be matched let's forget the key to making a great composite is creating the best selection and when it comes to hard edges the best way to make a selection is using the pen tool now I would highly recommend you to watch this video this is a complete guide to the pen tool that will allow you to master the pen tool in 30 minutes of course the mastery will come with practice but you will know everything that you need to know about the pen tool in this video so check that out if you do not know about the pen - all right let's start making the selection let's zoom in okay and let's use the pen tool click on the pen tool or press P which is the shortcut for the pen tool and let's start somewhere so let's create a point over here and click and drag it up all these try to stay inside don't go outside or do not be on the line so do not select like this don't be on the line why because later when we blur the edges halos will start showing up the road will start showing up so it's better to stay inside and then move forward from here so slowly and gradually and the best part about the pen too is that you can edit the points after the fact so he can hold the ctrl or command you can change the points you can change or modify the handles you can do anything you like right so you can just make blunt selection and then refine it later whatever your style is you can just move forward and this is one of the cleanest ways of making a action when you have hard edges okay doesn't work good with hair or other for something like that but when you have hard edges this is the way to go okay see here we have a sharp turn so how do we make the sharp turn hold the alt or option and click on this that way we will be able to make the sharp turn similarly over here have a look if we just simply click you will have this round which we don't want so here's what I would do before clicking here hold the alt or option and click on this once this breaks half of the handle in the direction of the path and then you can make it similarly over here holds the alt or option click on it again it breaks it just takes away the handle from the right hand side or in the direction of the path and you can just begin to click here and go forward now I'm not gonna bore you with a complete selection I already have made the selection for you so if I go to the paths I have this saved the car selection now how to save a path very easy the paths that we are working on is called the work path and if you want to save it simply rename it and we will name it anything that we like just car trial ok now it is saved now I already have one with a complete car selected I'll just click over there and as you can see the car is completely selected and I'll right-click on it and choose make selection we don't need any feather right now make sure it is zero and hit OK because we can add softness to the edge later anyway so hit OK and it makes a selection now come back to the list and then click on the mask button just like that and now you have the car selected now the best part about masks is that everything is recoverable so if you want the shadows back so just take the brush and with the mask selected I'll just paint this area with white so we'll get those areas back and that's the greatest advantage however if you have put that on a new layer it would have been destructive so keep up with the masks because that is non-destructive now just drag it and drop it on that document just like this and here you have it ready now let's resize it and place it in the right place but before we do that let us determine which is the right place for this car let's turn this off and let's create a new layer and I'm just drawing a few couple things just scribbling something all right let's have a look at this so this area is out of focus this area is blurry and the car is sharp we cannot place it over here okay this area is somewhere we can place it this area sharp this particular area we can place our car here we can place it here as well but if we place it here the direction is opposite you see the direction is this way okay but the car have a look at the car so the car is in this direction so we cannot put it over there so this is gonna be at the right place for it the car let's just delete it and let's resize the car and place it over there press ctrl or command 0 to fit the canvas to the screen and then press ctrl or command D and hold the shift key drag it from the corners to make it smaller in proportions if you hold the alt or option along with it it will make it smaller from the center which is cool right this size is okay let's zoom in quite a bit and place it in the place where we decided it to place okay this looks good let's rotate it a bit and make it a little bigger like that bring it to the side and there we go something like this and it looks fine now some of you might have an objection why am i placing this car in the left the thing is in India we drive on the left hand side maybe it's different in the u.s. actually it is different in the US and some other countries so I've had an habit of just okay because that's what I do just hit enter you can place it on the right but I don't think it will fit on the right will it probably if you want to place it on the right you can place it over here just make it smaller you get the idea let's come back now let's and anyway the road is empty so nobody cares now it's time for us to create a shadow for this car let me show you one very interesting technique to do that make a copy of the car press ctrl or command J the one on the bottom name that shadow so this will work as shadow and the one on the top this is car okay now in the shadow click on the mosque and just zoom it press ctrl or command + and zoom in and take the brush and that's why we created a mosque make sure the foreground color is white now what is the concept of mosque white shows up black hides make the brush a little bigger by holding the alt or option right mouse button drag it to the right to make it bigger on the left to make it smaller if you're using Mac that would be option control and then drag with the right mouse button so let's reveal some shadows let's paint and some shadows reveal some a little extra is okay because we can erase that anyway okay that is great we just want to keep the shadows we do not want to waste the shadow is just already there why because if we create the shadow no matter how hard we work it's never gonna be as natural as the original shadow so how do we just keep the shadow well you can take your time and try erasing it with black as the foreground color but that's not gonna be accurate let me tell you away then let us look at it in this light what does the shadow do it makes things darker so if I hold my hand over here and if there's a light it will make that area in the table darker no matter how dark the table is the shadow will always be darker than the surrounding areas okay got that what if we say to photoshop keep everything which is dark and hide everything which is bright as you can see in this case and we can do that by using blend if so double-click on the right hand side of the layer and take the slider of the current layer from right to left just like this as we do that the bright areas are going away what that does is that it hides the bright areas off the current layer from the current layer makes sense no so if we move the slider of the underlying layer just like this from right to left that will move the bright areas of the underlying layer from the current layer it will take it away are you getting it so if we move the slider from right to left it will hide the bright areas of the underlying leverages the road of the background from the current layer which is that of the shadow however if you move the sliders of this layer it will take away the bright areas off the current layer from the current layer just like this just play with it and you'll understand it if it's not clear to you this is okay but this is very harsh this is perfect selection so hold the alt or option click on a slider this splits the slider and makes the transition smooth like that okay that looks wonderful and okay that looks really nice now once you're satisfied with this hit okay and there you go you have the shadow but haven't got the shadow it has some texture in it why do we have the texture if you go back to this previous image and let's turn off the mask this road already had some texture so the shadow brings with itself some texture and we don't want it how can we get rid of it simple as well just blur it out select the shadow left go to filter blur and then Gaussian blur and stop at just at the point where the textures go away if you go too far you will see a halo effect you don't want that okay so stop at just the point where the texture is just go away okay 1.8 that is good else I'll go with 1.6 hit okay and that looks pretty nice ctrl or command zero to fit the canvas to screen now we have created the shadow in the car now we need to match the lightness and the color and here's how we do it create a group of both of them because you want to apply the adjustments both to the shadow and the car because if you have a look at the shadows in the background they are pretty faded they are a little brighter but have a look here it's very dark punchy so whatever adjustment that you can apply to this you can apply it both to the car and the shadow because we brought the shadow as well from the previous image so hold the ctrl or command select the other one and then press ctrl or command G to make a group and you can name it whatever you like I'm gonna name it car total alright the first thing that we need to match is the lightness or the brightness and we can do that using curves so let me show you two approaches to do that create a curves adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose curves okay as simple as that so suppose you want to make the car darker you would make a darker just like this now it affects both the car and the background how do we tackle that by creating a clipping mask so click on the clipping mask button this creates a clipping mask so whatever you do it just affects the car the other way of creating a clipping mask let's break it is holding the alt or option and click on the line between these two it also creates a clipping mask so that's approach number one let me show you approach number two so instead of creating a clipping mask what if you took it down just like this you put the curves and the car total inside of a larger group so hold the ctrl or command click on this one press ctrl or command G ok now change the blend mode of the group from pass-through to normal and when he do that it does not allow the adjustment layers to pass through the group so whatever you do inside of this group will just affect the car or in other words whatever you do inside of this group using adjustment layers will be limited to the elements inside of the group that's just an easier way to work with it and keeps things a little organized ok so we can name the whole group car with adjustments I'm just messing up the Spelling's add just mins kind of it's it's difficult to work with the Mike and just move the hand around alright so let's go back to the curves and let's make it a little darker because the background is a little darker let's zoom out and then let's match first of all the lightness this looks good don't worry about the punchy tone we can work on that later and too much of saturation we can reduce that later just focus on the brightness now let me show you a tip that will help you just focus on the amount of light and here's how to do it so create a new layer all the way to the top a solid color adjustment layer click on that decimal layer icon and choose solid color and choose any neutral color that you like white black gray whatever just make sure it is neutral and hit OK put it at the top and change the blend mode of this one to color if you have watched my previous tutorial on checklist this technique is present in that tutorial this really helps you check the amount of light ok now come back to the curves and work on it now you can just focus on the brightness so if I take it down it's matching pretty well like that not too much just a little bit and that is OK I can turn this off you can just delete it doesn't really matter so we have matched the lightness let's name it double click on the text and you can name it anything you like brightness lightness luminosity I'm gonna name it light or light ok all right we have matched the brightness now let's match the color and we can do that using curves as well click on the adjustment layer icon and choose curves again and create a curves adjustment layer and let's name it color okay now we will work with channels keep in mind the left's are the darks and the rights are the price so if you want to increase the Reds let's go to the Reds in the bright areas you will click and make a point on the right drag it up to increase the Reds in the bright areas if you want to decrease the Reds in the dark areas you'll make a point on the left and take it down now all we have to do is to analyze the colors of the background and try to match the car with that of the background okay so let's try taking the Reds down let's see how that look try taking it up it's matching maybe we will increase the Reds and highlights and take it away from the dark areas as there are less Reds in the dark areas in the background so let's keep it this way it looks nice now let's move to greens as you can see there's lots of greens in the car and we need to get rid of that so let's take greens away from the dark areas and that's gone now let's come to Blues let's try increasing and decreasing it so if we decrease it it looks nicer I don't know why it's increase the Reds blue sorry not too much just a little bit and have a look at that before and after so this is the before this is the after matching the color so before after let's zoom in and let's recheck it is it is the colors actually matching or was it not required let's go a little bit let's go to the Reds and let's increase the rents a little bit now the colors are matching but it's getting a little too saturated we need to decrease the saturation and then we can come back to this one so create a hue/saturation adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose hue/saturation and take the saturation to the left like that maybe this number now let's get back to color and work these channels we will increase the Reds a little bit and he will decrease the Reds on the shadows just like that okay and then come to the greens of course we need to decrease the greens all right blues you can adjust it the way we like it let's make it subtle and that looks nice now we have matched the color and the lightness we also matched the saturation now if you have a look at this image press ctrl or command 0 to fit the canvas to screen it's not punchy R which means there's a lot of contrast in here if you look at the shadows in the background it's faded right it's not very dark as this shadow over here it has a lot of contrast so we need to decrease the contrast and that can also be done using curves click on the adjustment layer icon and choose curves and put it at the top now how do we decrease the contrast let's first understand what is increase in the contrast increasing the contrast is actually making the brights brighter and the darks darker that's what it is so this would be increasing contrast brights brighter and darks darker but we need to decrease the contrast decreasing the contrast is making the brights darker and the darks writer has easy as that so first of all let's try to match the shadow of the car with that of the background so let's take it up just like this it's too much let's find the perfect spot now that looks wonderful and it fits with that of the background let's make the brights a little darker not too much a little make the bright starker from here make the darks brighter just like this and that pretty much does the job press ctrl or command 0 and let's have a look before very punchy after it really does help the image match with that of the background you can play with it as much as you like I'll leave it at that and it really looks wonderful now the car pretty much fits with the background but before you give it a green signal zoom in and have a look and you'll find something let's zoom in and this is very crucial and matching composite have a look at the background the background has a lot of noise and the car is super clean also the background is a little blurry even in the sharpest areas and the car has a lot of details it's tack sharp it seems like both of them are taking with a different camera which they actually wear but we need to make it look like both of them were taken with the same camera so there's a tool in Photoshop that will allow you to lower it out a little bit and add noise at the same time and here's how to do it let's open up the car select the car layer and then convert that into a smart object before we apply the photo because we might have to change the values later go to filter convert for Smart Filters and hit OK now you already guessed what I'm what am I gonna apply go to filter blur gallery and then field blur now it's so much flour we need to match the blare of the car with that of the background so let's decrease the blur okay let's move it and let's increase it just a little bit not too much how does to pixel look is it too blurry I think it's too blurry okay let's free pixel it's very blurry let's apply one pixel now it's matching it's pretty good let's try one point for no it just shows up integer values or just numbers doesn't go decimals okay now let's add some noise to it let's increase the amount down here beside effects and motion effect you have noise increase the amount make sure it matches with this so kind of pretty much matching let's decrease the size no let's keep the size this way let's decrease the roughness as you can see it's very nicely matching with that of the background okay that looks great and we don't want nose in the highlights so we will decrease this slider so that it looks natural okay at this point over here it's not matching so much so let's decrease the amount like that to this point is it matching at the top not so much that's okay we have to find a balance okay that is looking pretty good not very bad is it matching with this yes it is matching let's decrease the size just a little bit and yes it's great it does look great hit OK once you're satisfied and you have applied the noise to the car now the shadow has also to be applied the noise so select the shadow and convert that into a smart object or a filter convert for Smart Filters it's okay now the shadow is also a smart object now do you have to go again to filter blur gallery and then apply it again no you just have to copy and paste the smart filters to this so hold the alt or option click and drag and paste it on this layer so the smart filters will all we apply it to the shadows it looks wonderful doesn't it have a look really nice but still something is looking odd you know what is odd the edges are very very sharp and the head is looking are very sharp so here's what we will do we will soften out the mask but where is the mask because we converted this into a smart object it along with the mask became a smart object can we get the mask back yes we can just double-click on it and there you have the car with the mask okay and you can select the mask you can directly increase the feather from here or if you want to do it custom what you can also do you can choose the blur tool and just start blurring it like that okay you can do anything you like you can control the strength of the blur from this area you can just blur it out a little bit I'm gonna go ahead and add some feather probably maybe one pixel yeah that is great one pixel is great looks good okay alright now let's save it file save and then close this one once you save it now it's saving and as it saves it will actually update it in the stock well let's close it we don't need it see it made it smoother now the edges are smooth wonderful isn't it press ctrl or command 0 to fit it and and we are pretty much done but at the end do not forget this step if you want your composites to really match apply a collective effect to the whole image including the element and the background ok and you can apply any effect that you like that can be a simple curves adjustment layer applying some contrast anything just make sure that you apply an effect to the overall image both to the element and the background ok let's close the groups and let's add any effect so we're gonna go ahead and add a color lookup table so let's click on color lookup and you can choose anything you like just scroll through them choose whatever you like so everything looks good to me I think I'm gonna stay with this it looks wonderful and we are done it's done I would recommend that you take a break go somewhere eat something and then come back to the image after a while that way you will be able to spot the mistakes that you normally wouldn't find while editing the picture all right now we don't need anything else it's pretty much done now if you want to go back you can go back and adjust any of the things that you have to so this is decreasing the contrast just double-click on the icon to open up the properties and then just work on a to saturation anything you like you can always go back to all of them let's have a look at the before and after so this is the before and this is the after with the car now at this point I think we might have to fade it even more let's go back to this one and add some more fate like that now it's matching much better see how essential that was to take a break so that's how you create a composite match a composite in Photoshop step by step and I showed that to you let's do a quick little recap before you select anything or start working on the image it's very essential that you choose the right images make sure that the direction of light is matching or can be matched so if the light is coming from the left you can just flip it you can just work it around so make sure it can be matched make sure that the light is either soft or hard both on the element and on the background the third thing is also important very important is the influence of the environment on the object or subject ok these three things should match and only then you proceed with it to some extent that can be controlled probably by using dodging and burning but make sure these three are pretty much matching then make the perfect selection and that is the key to a great composite bring it in in form of a mask and we learned a new technique to create a shadow we made two copies of it the car and the shadow okay and in the shadow we revealed the shadow and then using blended kept the shadow after that we made a group of them and made some adjustments he matched the light then matched the color hue saturation and then matched the contrast if you have to do it do it if you don't have to do it don't wanna do it don't do it and at this point again I think I might want to make it a little darker so always take a break all right at the end always apply an effect any effect that you like it can be a simple contrast to the overall image both to the element and the background and do not forget to zoom in and look you might have to match not just noise and the blurriness but other properties as well just zoom in and have a look and I found out that we needed to match the noise and that's why we converted that to a smart object and applied the blur gallery filled blur and added the noise and the blur as well together and that's pretty much it for this video I hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and don't just subscribe ring the bells let you my friend don't miss a thing I would like to take this moment to thank all these nice people for supporting this channel on patreon and helping keep pics imperfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for all the support thank you for watching I'll see you guys my next montage and stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 1,859,974

Rating: 4.9316573 out of 5

Keywords: blend images in photoshop, change backgrond, compositing, color match in photoshop, curves, photoshop filters, pen tool, create a shadow in photoshop, blend-if, adjustment layers, photoshop tutorial, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: XJxPZdlJVRU

Length: 30min 28sec (1828 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Holy fucking popups. Was trying to click through to see if there was anything new to learn and there were so many frickin banner pop ups in the video. It was excessive.

[u/wickedpixel1221]

missed a color adjustment on the rearview/windshield, but maybe he'll catch that after he takes a break ;-)

[u/YoungGun1996]

Fck that guy,he can explain eraser tool for 1day .support real talents like asabin art

[u/YOUREABOT]

I have already learned something new 1 minute in to the video! love it. keep up the great content.