If you're having trouble making your composites look realistic,
make sure to check out this video,
I will go through seven compositing tips and tricks that I'm sure you'll love
Getting the lighting right in the composite can be a difficult task.
In this next tip, I'm going to show you
how to add Rim lighting to images that don't have it
In this composite, I have a cool background with a light source on the top right.
And I've done everything I could to color match this image.
I have applied the right brightness
saturation and hue, but the image still doesn't look realistic.
And the reason is that I'm not getting
the right highlights on her body that would appear if this was a real photo.
So if your image doesn't have a rim light,
what you need to do is take it from somewhere else.
In this case, I'll use this photo of this couple working out.
Look at the rim light on her right arm.
We can take that in place it in our composite.
To do so, select the Lasso tool and make a loose selection around her arm.
Then press Ctrl C (Windows) or Command C (macOS) to copy
I'll come back into my working composite
and I'm going to press Ctrl V (Windows) Command V (macOS) to paste.
And this is the highlight that we're going to use on her arm
I'll press Ctrl T (Windows) or Command T (macOS) to transform.
Make sure that you check this box so that you can see the pivot point.
And make sure that you place a reference point on her shoulder.
And that's going to be the reference for my composite.
I'm also going to reduce the Opacity so I
can see the layers below and I'm going to click-and-drag the holding Shift.
To scale from that point,
and I'm just trying to get it large enough so that it covers that entire arm like so
it won't be a perfect match, but that's OK.
And what I'm going to do is place this
highlight as best as I can over the original arm.
And I can continue scaling if I need to.
I think something like this should work,
Then, I'm going to increase the Opacity back to 100% and I'll desaturate
the layer by pressing Ctrl Shift U (Windows) or Command Shift U (macOS)
And I'm going to go into Filter > Liquify.
From the Liquify filter.
I'm going to collapse all these panels since I don't need them
And the panel that I do want to see is the View Options panel.
From here, make sure that enable to Show Backdrop
and where it says Use you can select your woman layer like so then you can zoom in
and just make sure that the arm matches as best as possible.
Again, you don't have to be perfect, but just get it close enough.
The trick here is to use a large brush
and push the pixels in as best as you can like so.
Just make sure that it covers the entire arm.
And I think that this will be good.
It's not perfect, but it should work.
I'm going to press OK Photoshop will make that distortion,
Then, I can change the Blending Mode to screen and I'll call the layer "Rim light"
Next, I'll open up my group and place
the layer right above my woman layer like so it is clipped to the layer below so
that the edges are defined by the actual arm.
What I'm going to do now is adjust the brightness of this rim light layer so
that the only thing that is visible is the highlight and not the rest of the arm.
So you can go into Image > Adjustment Levels and just darken up the image
by clicking-and-dragging on this black point like so.
And notice how this is looking much more realistic now.
And I can drag this to the left and you
can fine-tune the highlight accordingly to get a realistic result.
You can press OK when you're done at this point or you need to do is fine-tune the details.
For example, you can select the Move tool
and move the arm around if need be so that it matches better.
You can also press Ctrl T (Windows) or Command T (macOS) and you can scale it up
and keep moving it so that it matches as best as possible.
Then, you can create a Layer Mask and paint
with black on that Layer Mask and hide the unnecessary areas.
And by using this technique you can apply realistic rim lights to your composites.
This is what my result looks like when I have
applied the same technique to both arms, her face and her hair.
And this is what it looks like after I've applied a global color grade.
Sometimes, when you create a mask,
you might get these white outlines known as fringing all on your subject.
They're really annoying.
But with this technique, you should be able to remove them fairly quickly.
I'll double-clicking the Hand Tool to fit
the image to screen and I'll select this soccer player's Layer Mask I can disable it
by clicking on it and holding Shift and to remove the fringing go into
Filter > Other > and select Minimum,
and that'll take us into this dialog box that is designed to contract mass.
The great thing about the Minimum filter
is that you're not stuck with whole numbers.
You can use decimal points when adjusting
the radius to give you much more control when you can track your mask.
And also, there's two different algorithms
that we can use, Roundness and S1quareness in this case.
We'll go about round this because we're working with an organic object, a person.
So there's no sharp edges or straight edges.
In this case, a radius of 1 pixel should work.
And I'll press OK and notice that the white fringing is now gone.
Another great thing about this filter is
that you can selectively apply it to areas of your mask.
You can do so by selecting the Lasso tool
then freehand the selection on the black outline on his arm.
Next go into Filter > Other > Minimum and again, a radius of 1 pixel should work.
Notice how the black line disappears without affecting the rest of the mask.
Remember, if you're enjoying these
techniques, make sure to click on that like button.
One of the most often overlooked
principles and compositing is matching the ambient color.
Let me show you an amazing technique so that you can easily match the ambient color
of all the objects in your composites.
First, go into the New Adjustment Layer icon and create a new Color Fill Layer
Then, I'll select a 50% grey.
You don't have to be exact.
As long as close to 50% it should work
press OK then change the Blending Mode from Normal to Luminosity.
This will make all the Luminance Values in the composite the same,
and the hue of each item will be more noticeable.
If it's not noticeable, you can go and create a Hue
and Saturation Adjustment Layer and increase the Saturation.
I'm going to place these two layers into a group
Hold Shift, click on both
then press Ctrl G (Windows) or Command G (macOS)
And this is my ambient color check.
And from here, you can see the ambient color on the image.
Notice that our astronauts suit is white,
but there's actually some color hidden in there.
When I enable this, you can see that we have a lot of magenta,
in some cases oranges, yellow, and even green.
So what we need to do is make sure
that the ambient color of our scene matches the foreground
In this case, notice how most of the background has a blue tint to it.
So we need to match that onto our
astronaut so that the composite looks realistic.
So I'll select my astronaut, then I'll create a Selective Color Adjustment Layer
then click on this icon to clip it to the layer below so that this
Adjustment Layer only affects the astronaut.
Then from the colors, dropdown select Neutrals.
And now we need to make sure that the astronaut's color matches the background.
I'll start by adding a little bit of cyan,
which will cool the astronaut, which is exactly what we want.
Notice that we have a lot of magenta, so I'll reduce magenta to add green.
Then, I'll reduce yellow to add blue.
And notice that this is looking much, much better now.
The foreground is actually matching the background.
I can also adjust the whites.
Most of his suit is white,
so we need to adjust that so there's no other hues in there.
So I'll reduce the magenta on his suit and they would turn blue.
I can also reduce the yellow to make it even more blue.
Then I can go into the blacks and you'll see the areas on his glove in his home
and change when I add a little bit of cyan and reduce the yellow like.
So notice that this matches the background much better now.
And when I disable the ambient color check layers, you can see the result.
This is before and after.
So always make sure that the ambient color
matches so that your composites look more realistic.
By the way, if color is important to you, then make sure to check out
the MSI Creator 15 laptop, which features MSI's exclusive True-Pixel display
which is a combination of several features specifically designed
for creative pros to get the best colors possible.
These features include a 4k display up to 220ppi great for great on-screen detail
that can reproduce Adobe RGB at 100%
Also included is the true color technology
which ensures color accuracy so that your work is displayed exactly as you intend.
MSI calibrates all Creator15 laptops at the factory and their Kalmen certified.
You'll get excellent color representation which is necessary for creative work.
MSI creator laptops are tested and optimized to run Adobe software
including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and many others.
It gives you the peace of mind that your laptop is fully compatible and it will
perform efficiently with your favorite design apps.
If you want to find out more about
the MSI Creator 15, then check out the link below in the description.
But anyway, let's jump right back into the tutorial.
Have you ever had a composite that doesn't quite match the background?
In most cases, it happens because you did not take perspective into account when
placing elements into your background image.
Let me show you how you can find perspective in a photo and how you can use
perspective to composite in other elements.
In this background image, you can see that we have receding lines.
These parallel converging lines all lead to a vanishing point on the horizon line.
You can then select the Line tool and click-and-drag on these parallel
converging lines and follow them and see where they meet.
I'll start with this line here.
Then I'll hold Shift and I'll start drawing
a new line and or at least a Shift key once I've started drawing it that way,
I can draw it in the same layer and follow it all the way through.
And you'll notice they meet right about here.
And if I click-and-drag from that point, you'll see that all the lines
on my background recede into that vanishing point
and that vanishing point will sit on the horizon line.
So my horizon line is on this area.
I can click-and-drag a guy down and place
this guide so that I know where my horizon line is.
If you don't see your ruler,
you can press Ctrl R (Windows) or Command R (macOS)
in one way of figuring out where
the horizon line is without tracing parallel converging lines is to look
at your image and see if you can figure out where the ground plane meets the sky.
The place where they meet will be where the horizon line is.
Now that I know where the horizon line is,
I can enable my Model layer and I'll disable the Layer Mask by holding Shift
and clicking on the Layer Mask thumbnail and notice that this image also has
parallel converging lines so you can follow the parallel converging lines
on this image to find where the horizon line is.
And it's right here, right next to her hips.
So I'll delete the line layers. Since we don't need them,
I'll hold Shift and click on the Layer Mask to bring it back.
I'll select the Move Tool and I'll move
the model group directly over my composite so that both horizontal lines match
making that composite look and feel more realistic.
And you don't have to be precise.
You can move the model up or down just a bit.
As long as you're within that range, your composite should work.
One of the most difficult things to do
in Photoshop is mask hair from busy backgrounds.
Let me show you a wonderful technique
that will help you in these situations so that your composites look more realistic.
First of all, I'm going to select my Foreground layer
and I'm going to click on the Remove Background button.
This will use Adobe Sensei machine learning technology to analyze your photo
and make a selection of the main subject and apply a Layer Mask to it.
Photoshop does a great job.
The mask is not perfect, but not bad for one click.
And the secret that we professionals have is
that if something is too difficult to select, we just disregard it.
And we painted back in digitally.
This is what we're going to do next.
The first step is to mask out hair that we don't want to include.
So select the Brush Tool then paint with black on hairs that are too difficult
to select and then paint them back individually to make them more realistic.
There's two ways of doing that. Let me show you both.
I'm going to create a new layer and I'm
going to paint single hair strands using the Brush Tool from the brush settings.
I'll set the brush size to 1 pixel, the spacing to 1%.
And if you have a Wacom tablet, enable the shape dynamics and.
Set the Size Jitter Control to Pen Pressure.
I'm currently using a Wacom tablet, and what I'll do is I'll
hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) to temporarily activate the Eyedropper tool
and I can select a color found on her hair and I can now paint in that hair digitally like so
so that you can see what I'm doing.
I'll zoom in by tapping in the Z key
and you can see how I'm just painting in these strands of hair.
And as you paint,
keep sampling from the original hair color so that you can have hair strands
of different colors and also follow the hairs strands that are already there
and noticeable just to keep everything looking more realistic.
And obviously you can keep following this
technique all around her hair to get a better result.
The second technique is to use a brush made out of actual hair.
Start by creating a new layer underneath your model.
Then I'll double-clicking the Hand Tool
to fit the image, the screen and I'll select the brush
that I already have saved in my Libraries panel.
I'll search for it. It's called Hair.
Here it is.
And now when I paint, you'll see that I have this hair strand
now for the sake of time, I'm not going to go over how this brush was made.
But I recently published a video
on masking tips where I show it, how I created it step by step.
So I'll place a link to that Photoshop
tutorial the low end of description so that you can check it out
In that video, I also share a link to the Brush Tool
that you can download it and use it in your projects.
But anyway, this is the brush that I'm going to use.
I'm going to undo that and reduce my brush
size by tapping in the left bracket key on the keyboard and you can see a preview
of it there so that the hair matches my model.
I will need to make some adjustments.
So I'll click on the brush settings button from the Options bar under Brush tip
I'm going to flip it on the x-axis so that the hair is facing the other way.
Now, I'm going to use the left arrow key and the keyboard to rotate the brush.
I could also rotate it from the Options bar under the Angle Option.
And if you're in an older version
of Photoshop, you can only rotate it from the Brush settings.
But anyway, I'm going to rotate and resize
the brush to make it match as best as possible.
And I'll click once to add the hair strand before and after.
And as you can see, that makes this mask look a lot more
realistic since we're painting in hair strands instead of masking them,
which a lot of times is more difficult and it doesn't look as good.
In this next clip, I'm going to show you
what I do to finalize my composites and make them look more cohesive.
First, I do one of two things:
I either put all my layers into a Smart Object,
but in a composite like this that has a lot of layers and a lot of Smart Object
already, I will copy all the layers into one flat layer.
There's an easy way to do that.
You can press Ctrl Alt Shift E (Windows) or Command Option Shift E (macOS)
and we create this layer
that is just a flattened version of all the other layers.
And I usually call this layer final and I convert it into a Smart Object.
And the reason that I'm converting this to a Smart Object is because I'm going
to apply some color effects and I want to be able to edit them.
Also, if I decide to change something, my composite, I can copy all the layers
and paste them inside of the Smart Object to update it.
So I'm still working with a Smart Object even though this is my final step
next go to Filter > Camera Raw filter and we can treat our composite as a single
photo and we can adjust the color, tonality, and other things in our photo.
For example, I can add a little bit of contrast.
Darken up the shadows a little bit, maybe even cool the image a bit more.
Add a little bit of texture,
maybe even clarity, which is contrast on edge pixels
add vibrance, which is a smart way of adding saturation.
It protects skin tones and already saturated pixels.
And if you've been following me for a while, then you probably know that I
always like to end my composites by adding a little bit of Grain
If you zoom into the image, you'll see that it's quite blurry in some
areas and it doesn't feel like an actual photo.
So to make it feel more like a photo,
I like to add just a tiny little bit of Grain just to bring that film element back
usually anywhere between 5 and 10, depending on a composite
Then, I'll right-click
and fit the image to view and I'll add a vignette.
And you can see my before and after,
I think that it's very important to add a Camera Raw adjustment at the end of all
your composites to make all the elements come together as one.
By the way, if you find Camera Raw sluggish
it's probably because you don't have a powerful GPU.
The GPU is an essential component when running Photoshop.
If you look at the Adobe website, you can see a list of Photoshop features
that require a GPU for acceleration, which includes Camera Raw.
In other words, these features can be very slow without a powerful GPU.
Also, some features will not work without a GPU.
The laptop that I'm currently using contains the powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX
super with 8GB gigabytes of video memory.
Best of all, Nvidia has creative app partnerships
with Adobe Black Magic, Autodesk and more to bring GPU accelerated
improvements to your favorite creative software, including Photoshop.
So make sure that you check out the MSI Creator 15.
The link is below in the description.
After you spend hours on a composite, it can be difficult to spot mistakes
to see your composite in a new light, try out this next trick.
It's a lot like flipping a paper upside down when you're trying to spot mistakes
in Photoshop all you need to do is go into View and select Flip Horizontal.
And that flips the image horizontally, of course, and it shows your composite
in a new way and hopefully you can spot mistakes.
Now, it's very important to note that we're not transforming pixels.
This is just the preview.
So if you were to save and close this file
and open it up again, you would see the original composite
and not the flip version because we're not transforming pixels.
We're just changing the way we look at them.
The old way of doing this was to go
into image, image rotation, and flip the canvas horizontally.
And this Command actually transforms pixels.
So Photoshop will have to calculate the transformation and that could take
some time on larger files in slower computers.
But now all you need to do is go
into View and select flip horizontal and it happens automatically.
So let me know in the comments,
which were your favorite compositing tips and if you saw one that will help you
in your workflow, remember to hit that like button
and subscribe if you're new to the Photoshop Training Channel.
Again, I would like to thank MSI for sponsoring today's Photoshop tutorial.
If you haven't already, make sure to check out
MSI Creator 15 laptop, which is designed for creators,
but it is also a well-rounded system for everyday users and gamers.
Spec-wise, it's equipped with a 2.3 GHz Intel i7 eight-core
processor, 32 GB ram and the powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super
with 8GB of video memory and of course, a 4k display,
that can reproduce Adobe RGB at 100%.