In this video, I'm going to show you how to make better composites in Photoshop.
Hi everyone.
Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez.
You can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this video, you will learn what is perhaps the most important thing about compositing
images together, and that is perspective.
What I'm going to teach you today will probably make you a way better Photoshop user.
Your composites will look much more realistic, and you will know exactly what type of images
you will need to create great composites.
This is what this Photoshop tutorial's all about, perspective and how it works with compositing.
In compositing, you can get pretty much everything else right, lighting, color, shadows and extractions,
but if the perspective is off, your viewer will know that something is not right with
your composite.
I'm sure that you can probably see that something is off with this image, but you probably
don't know what.
Have you ever had that feeling that something is not quite right with a composite that you've
made?
Something just feels off.
Well, in a lot of cases, that's the perspective that is off, and that is what's causing that
feeling.
By the way, don't feel too bad if you're making these perspective mistakes.
I have made them myself plenty of times, and I have even seen movie posters and advertisements
that make horrible mistakes with perspective, so even some pros have problems putting together
multiple images from different sources.
Anyway, in this tutorial, I'm going to use this
Photoshop file that contains many layers and groups that are going to help me illustrate
how perspective works and how we can use it to create better composites.
This is a small portion of what I talk about in my Compositing Made Easy course.
There's a link to it down below in the description if you're interested in that course.
The file is provided in the course download.
Anyway, let's get started with this tutorial.
As you can imagine from the introduction and the title of this video, the perspective is
off in this composite.
We have this foreground element and we have this background element, which
is the beach, so the perspective is off.
You may have two questions.
How do we fix it?
First of all, how do we find out what the perspective of each image is?
I obviously have already masked out the foreground element, which is the man standing here.
If you hold "shift" and click on the "layer mask," you can disable it.
This is what the original image looks like, and if I hold "shift" and click again on that
"layer mask," it will remove the background.
If you look at the image, we have gotten a lot of the things right.
The lighting works, the colors match, there's even some mud on
his shoes that sort of makes it look like he's standing there on the beach.
Yet, the more you look at the image, the more you know that something is off.
Now, before we fix the image, we're going to talk a little bit more about perspective
and what it is.
I'm going to disable this group and just look at this diagram.
It shows you a grid that represents the ground plane, this line here, that represents the
horizon line, which is very important, and right above that we have
the sky.
You'll notice that the horizon line is where this ground plane meets the sky.
No matter what image you're working on, you will always have a ground plane and a place
where it meets the sky.
I know that some of you may be thinking that the eye level is where the horizon level should
be, and that's true.
Your eye level will always be where the horizon line is, but in the case of a photo, will
be where the camera was when the image was shot.
When you look at images, always think of where the camera was pointed when the image was
shot.
If it looks like the camera was pointing up, then the horizon line will be low on the image,
so below the center line.
If it looks like the camera was pointing down, then the horizon line will be high on the
image.
That's a quick tip that you can use to find the horizon line on an image.
Now, it's easy to find the horizon line on a diagram like this, but what about on a real
photo?
Well, we have this photo here, and it's of a train station.
You can find the horizon line on images by following the converging lines and
figuring out where the vanishing points of the image are.
The vanishing points lay on the horizon line.
I'm going to use the line tool to trace the parallel converging lines on this image.
I'm going to select red as my foreground color.
Then, I'm going to click and drag along the parallel converging lines to see where they
meet.
Actually, you can already tell that the vanishing point where all these converging lines are
meeting is right here, right about the center of the image.
If I start drawing out my lines from that center point, from that vanishing point, you'll
see that all the lines on this image converge to that point.
See how all these lines are converging into that point?
Well, we can tell that that is definitely where the vanishing point is and where the
horizon line is.
See that?
Also, if you look at the image, you can see where the ground plane is.
Here's the ground, and you can estimate where the sky would be.
We can't really see the sky, but you can sort of guess.
If this is where the ground is, then the sky will probably start somewhere around here,
which is obviously where the vanishing point is and the horizon line is.
That's how you would find the horizon line on a photo.
Sometimes, it's not going to be as clear as this, where you have all these wonderful converging
lines that will tell you exactly where it is.
Sometimes, you'll need to just give it a good guess.
Especially on images that have a white background and you really can't tell.
As I mentioned earlier, if it looks like the camera was pointing
down when the photo was shot, then the horizon line will be above the center of image.
If it was pointing up, then the horizon line will be below the center of the image.
Also remember that sometimes the vanishing point may not actually be in the image, it
will outside the canvas and that's okay.
Anyway, so now we know that the horizon line in this image is right about there, so that's
good.
I'm going to enable the city layer.
Notice that even though we're standing high up on a building, these converging lines will
end up on this horizon line, and this is where the sky begins.
Ground plane, sky, so that's the horizon line there.
In all these examples, we know exactly where the ground plane is and where the horizon
line is.
Now, I'm going to just show you one other quick example to drive this point home.
We were just looking at one-point perspective, we have these boxes here.
If you follow all these lines to a converging point, you will see that we have our vanishing
point there.
This is sort of like that train station we were just looking at.
All the converging lines and then a vanishing point that's on the horizon line,
of course.
Now, even if you were to turn any one of these cubes to a different direction, we would still
get a vanishing point on that horizon line because the cube is in perspective.
See how we can just imagine that we had another cube, we turned it to the left.
All those converging lines will end up on the horizon line if the cube is sitting on
the ground plane, but what if we bring in another cube like this one there?
Right away, you can tell that this cube does not match the perspective of all the other
cubes.
I'll disable some of these layers to make it more obvious.
This cube does not match.
We're sort of compositing this cube in, so notice how it's not really matching?
Well, if we wanted this cube to match, then we would need to find out where the horizon
line for that cube is, so we can follow the converging lines to find the vanishing point,
and there it is.
Then drag the cube down to place the vanishing point on the horizon line.
Notice that once we get the perspective right, it looks like that cube is sitting on that
ground plane, and we can place it anywhere we want
here.
If we want to scale in perspective, here's a trick for you.
Press Ctrl T, Command T to transform and you can place the pivot point anywhere on the
horizon line.
I can even place it way out here.
Hold Shift and Alt and click and drag on that corner handle to scale in perspective.
See that?
The cube always looks like it's sitting there.
Obviously, in this case, you would want to place it where the actual vanishing point
for that cube is, and then you can scale that in perspective that way.
See that, how it's scaled in perspective?
By the way, when you're compositing, you don't need to place anything right on the horizon
line unless it's something very obvious like a road or something like that.
With organic things like people and things like that, you can go up a little bit or go
down a little bit, but you really can't be completely off because then it becomes obvious
that it's not in perspective.
I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I do want to mention that there's such
things as two-point perspective, so where you have two vanishing points and one horizon
line.
For example, if you're shooting the corner of a street, and this will be buildings, and
each side of the building will have a vanishing point.
There is also three-point perspective, so maybe we are shooting up at a building, so
you can see how we have two vanishing points on the horizon line, and we have one up there
in the sky.
Also, remember what I mentioned earlier.
If you're shooting up, then the horizon line will be below the center of the image.
Notice how low the horizon line is.
Again, it's like we're shooting up at a tall building, and
we can flip this vertically, so let me do that.
I'm going to go into "image," "image rotation," "flip canvas vertical."
Notice now how it looks like we're flying over a building.
We're shooting down at it, but the horizon line is high.
When you shoot down on something, the horizon line will be high.
You don't have to be flying over anything to get a high horizon line.
You can simply be taking a photo of something on the ground.
Anyway, I'm just going to undo that.
I know that you're probably thinking that everything we've discussed so far are things
that you would learn in a traditional
art class, and you're correct.
All those art principles are really what help you create better composites in Photoshop.
When you're drawing, you're trying to create the illusion of realism by using perspective,
highlights, and shadows, and all these different things that we can use to fool the eye into
believing that that to the image is real.
In Photoshop, we may not be drawing the photos that we bring in, but we can still use those
same principles to help fool the eye into thinking
that we're dealing with a real photo.
That's why I haven't spent too much time in this video talking about Photoshop features,
because I think that the traditional art is really what's important.
Anyway, another really important thing to remember is that you cannot see the top part
of something if it's above the horizon line.
Look at these three boxes right up here, these three boxes.
We can't see the top because these boxes are above the horizon line.
The boxes here below it, we can't see the bottom because they're below the horizon line.
Anything below the horizon line, we can't see the bottom of.
When you're compositing, maybe you have a stock image, for example, of this car.
If we wanted to place this car into the scene and make it look like it's really sitting
on the ground, then we would need to know the perspective of a car.
Of course, we can draw lines and see where the perspective is, but by using this example,
we can sort of give it a good guess as to where the car would be.
Well, we can't see the bottom of the car, so then that means that the car must be below
the horizon line.
Well, how low below the horizon line?
It's definitely not this cube here, because we can't see too much of the top part.
I know we can see a lot of the hood, but in reality, we're looking more at the top of
the roof of the car.
It will probably be this first cube here, so the right perspective will be somewhere
along this area.
Maybe right about here.
Notice that just by placing the car in perspective in this diagram, it already looks more like
it belongs here.
By the way, if you're enjoying this tutorial, don't forget to click on that "subscribe"
button and notification bell.
If you have any questions anywhere along the tutorial, feel free to leave them down below.
Anyway, now that we know all this information, let's go back to the image that I was showing
you when we started the tutorial, which is this man with this background.
Where is the horizon line on this beach image?
Way up here.
Where is the horizon line of this man?
Well, it's right above his knees.
Whoever shot this photo was probably on their knees themselves, and got a little low and
shot this
picture right behind his knees.
When we composited this person in here, even though we did everything right, the image
still quite doesn't match because the perspective is off.
We need to do one of two things.
We need to either bring the man up and place him in the right perspective so that the horizon
line is right about where his knees are.
Notice that just by simply by dragging that man up there, it already looks a little bit
more realistic than what we had originally.
The other thing that we can do is bring the background down
so that the perspective matches, like so.
Again, notice that by simply matching the perspective, the image looks much, much more
realistic.
Now unfortunately, that doesn't always work.
Let's go back into this train image.
We already know that the horizon line is right about here in the center of the image.
If I click and drag that man right about there, and I can use that same scaling technique
because he's too tall, so I want to make him smaller and put the pivot point right about
where the horizon line
is and scale by holding "shift" and "alt."
Notice that he always looks like a giant.
That is because the perspectives of both images are very different.
This is the technique that you would use to make something look really big or really small,
use opposite perspectives.
In this case, we don't want that.
We actually want to make him look like he's part of the scene, but it just simply won't
work.
In a situation like this, what you would have to do is either use a different background
or different foreground or just, unfortunately,
live with the fact that you will never be able to get him into perspective.
That is the downside of working with images that you don't shoot yourself with the intention
of making a composite.
The last thing that I'm going to leave you with is if you are working with objects that
are not organic, so not people or animals, and you're working with something like a car,
a building or something like that, there are things that you can do to change the perspective.
With this building, I'm going to show you how to change the perspective.
Select it from the layers
panel.
Then go into "edit," "perspective warp," and click on one of the corners of the building.
Then click and drag the points on the grid to match the side of the building, so just
match the corners.
By the way, I'm using a Smart Object, so this technique works with Smart Object, so you
can work non-destructively.
Then you can create another grid for the other face and snap them to the original face like
so.
It snaps on the bottom as well.
Make sure you get the other side, and click on the "warp" button in the options bar, and
you can click and drag these points to distort the building so that it matches the perspective
of the scene.
I'm trying to make it seem as if the converging lines of the building will meet at the horizon
line.
Also, you can click on this icon here to straighten those lines, and continue moving the points.
Another thing that you can do is hold "shift," click on the line.
It will highlight in yellow and that will allow you to move both points at the same
time.
The perspective is much better than it was originally.
I can go back into the smart object, disable the effects before and after, and I can double
click on the "perspective warp" label to bring those points back and continue adjusting them
if need be.
I don't really need to, so I'm just going to press the "escape" key to cancel out of
the perspective warp.
This is actually the same technique that I used to fix the perspective of the crate in
the introduction.
If you want to learn more about perspective and compositing, then don't forget to check
out my course on compositing where
I go on much more detail on perspective and many other things about compositing.
That's it.
Don't forget to click on that "subscribe" button.
Thank you so much for watching, and I will talk to you again in the next tutorial.