Have you ever seen those cool Instagram posts that make it seem like the subject is jumping
This is a document that we're going to work with. It only contains one layer, which is
basically a screen shot of an Instagram post.
And, if you want to use this file, I'll place a link to it down below in the description.
And, to show you how this effect works, I'm going to use this photo by Hannah Busing from
Unsplash.
Again, I'll place a link to this photo down below in the description. But, you can use
any photo that you want.
The first step is to get this photo into our working document.
And, with the move tool selected, all I need to do is click-and-drag this image onto the
tab that we're working on.
Photoshop will switch automatically, and once you release, the photo will appear on your
working document.
First, I'll name this layer, and I'll call it outside. Because the contents of this layer
will appear outside of the Instagram post.
Then, I'll duplicate the layer by pressing Ctrl J in Windows, Command J on the Mac, and
I'll rename it, and call it inside.
Because the contents of this layer will appear inside of the Instagram post. I'm gonna place
this inside layer at the bottom of the layer stack in this document.
So directly below the Instagram overlay.
And if I disable the outside I icon, you'll disable the layer, of course, and you'll see
that this layer, the inside layer, is what appears inside of the Instagram post.
And this outside layer will cover the pixels over the Instagram overlay. And this is gonna
help us create our 3-D effect.
But before we do that, I need to select the outside layer, hold Ctrl on Windows, Command
on Mac, and click on the inside layer.
When only those two layers are selected, not the Instagram overlay, I'm going to click
on this chain link icon to create a link between these two layers.
This will allow me to transform and move them at the same time, and I don't have to select
both layers.
All I have to do is select one layer, and both layers will move at the same time. You
can see that in the preview here. Now, I'm going to disable the outside layer, for now.
Because I wanna see where the inside starts. And I'm going to add a guide there, so that
I could see where that line is.
To add guides, make sure that you press Ctrl R in Windows, Command R in the Mac, to enable the rulers.
You can also go into View, and select Rulers to enable or disable them. And,
you can click-and-drag guides from either of these rulers.
And, here's a quick tip for you.
If you accidentally go into the vertical guides, but you wanted a horizontal guide, don't worry.
All you need to do is hold Alt on windows, option on the mac, and you'll flip it, and
you can bring it down and place it where it needs to go. You don't need a perfect guide,
I'm just using it for a quick visual reference.
I'm going to enable the outside layer, again. And notice that when I move 'em, again, the
other one moves.
And if I press Ctrl T, Command T, to transform, I can transform them at the same time.
Notice that I can't see the transformation handles, because they're outside of the canvas.
And, in order to zoom out and see them, all you need to do is press Ctrl 0, that's Command
0 on the Mac, and this enables the bird's eye view, which will zoom out until you can
see the transformation handles.
And, I can click-and-drag on these handles, and scale this layer.
And more or less, this is where I want my model. And here's another trick. If I press
Ctrl 0, Command 0 on the Mac,
again, this time, Photoshop instead of zooming out, it'll zoom in, so that the transformation
handles are closer to the edges of the screen.
And, at this point, I could hit the check mark to commit the changes. I'm going to double
click on the hand tool, to fit the image to screen, so that we can see what we're doing.
What I need to do now, is make sure that this outside image is only showing the girl jumping.
Nothing else.
So I need to make a selection around her, and all I need to do, is go into the quick
selection tool, and click on Select Subject.
This will use Adobe Sensei. This is Adobe's artificial intelligence. It will try to find
the main subject of my image, and it will select it.
In this case it does a fairly good job.
There's a few problems that I'm going to fix, simply by holding Alt on Windows, option on
the Mac, and clicking and dragging to deselect.
So I'm deselecting these areas that don't need to be selected. I just want her selected.
And, it doesn't need to be a perfect selection, because most of her body will be in the actual
post, not outside of it, so we don't need to worry about it too much.
All I need to do is make sure that her feet and the lower parts of her body are properly
selected and properly masked.
So, with a selection active, all I need to do now is click on this icon to create a new
layer mask. And, notice now that this layer only contains her body.
And if I select the move tool, I can click-and-drag her. And notice that all I get is her body
creating that cool effect.
The reason that this is working, is because we were able to connect the two layers with
this chain link icon. So you can move your model, and place them accordingly.
The next step is to make it a little more realistic by adding a shadow.
And you can do so by double clicking to the side of the layer, to bring up the layer style
window, and click on the drop shadow layer style.
From here, I'll reset it to default, just so that we're working with the default settings.
and I can click-and-drag, and you can see how that shadow comes out. And, what I need
to do is make sure that I'm using a shadow color that is similar to the color of the
shadows in the actual image.
So I'm going to select the shadow here, which is a very dark brown color.
And I'll press OK. And then I can adjust the size, which controls the blurriness of the
shadow, and then the distance. And these are all subjective, of course.
It's up to you.
In this case, I don't want the shadow to be too noticeable,
so I'll place it here, which is actually more noticeable than I really wanted,
but I want to be able to display the next example.
So I'll press OK.
Now, what I want to show you now, is how we can get rid of the shadow on the actual background.
Because if you notice,
we've created a shadow that affects the actual background, and we don't want that.
One way of avoiding that, is by pressing Control Alt G on Windows, that's Command option G
on the Mac, to create a clipping mask.
Notice now that this layer has a down pointing arrow pointing to the Instagram overlay layer.
That means that the pixels that are going to be visible on this outside layer are the
same pixels that are visible in the layer below.
So the layer below controls the visibility of the layer on top.
And the advantage of connecting all these layers together is that when I move one layer,
it moves the bottom layer, and it will also move the layer style.
So watch the shadow.
See how the shadow keeps appearing only on this bottom layer?
See that?
So this is a great way of keeping everything organized, making sure that everything shows,
and works appropriately, so you don't have to do too much work once you set it up.
All you have to worry about now is fine tuning the mask, and fine tuning the areas where,
where her body's going to show.
For example, I noticed that my selection didn't do that good of a job here.
So all I need to do now, is select the brush tool, paint with black on that area here.
And actually, you want to paint on the layer mask. Notice that I actually painted on the pixels.
You don't want that. And that happened because my actual layer was selected.
This outline, the focus, is on the layer. And that's why that didn't work.
So let me undo that, and make sure that the focus, the white outline is on the layer mask.
And now, if I paint with black, those pixels are hidden.
I'm not deleting pixels, I'm just hiding them.
So you can adjust your mask accordingly. And if you make a mistake and accidentally hide
pixels, you can paint with white to bring those pixels back.
So that's why layer masks are so powerful. They allow you to hide and reveal pixels.
And, you may wanna spend some time on your image and working on these smaller details.
I'm not gonna do too much of that on this tutorial, because it's not necessary.
But, if you wanted to fix something like this, you can maybe tap on the left bracket key
on the keyboard, to get a really small brush, and then just paint away these pixels so that
your mask looks much better.
Again, in a real project, spend a lot of time fine tuning these small details.
But, for a tutorial, is really not that important. Although when I see little mistakes like that,
I do feel like fixing them.
But anyway, I'll try not to. So I'll double click on the hand tool to fit the image to
screen. I'll press Control semicolon, to hide the guide. And you can see my final result!
From now, all you need to do is save the image as a jpeg. and you can do so by going into
file, export, export as. Under format, select jpeg, quality of 100%, and click on export
when you're done.
This will save a jpeg onto your computer. You can then take that jpeg into your phone,
and upload it into Instagram.
There's a lot of ways of doing that. Airdrop, Dropbox, and several other methods. If you
want to upload the photo from your desktop or laptop onto Instagram, there's several
programs that will allow you to do that. I prefer using a program called Windowed. Which
is this application here. There's a lot of them, like I said.
This one just happens to be the one that I use. It works for both Windows and for Macs.
And once you've logged into your Instagram account, all you need to do is click on this
plus icon, and you can locate your jpeg in your computer, and upload it into your Instagram
account.
Talking about Instagram, I also have a Photoshop tutorial where I show you how to create swipeable
panels in Instagram. I also provide a free template, so that you don't have to do all the work.
The link to that video is in the description. Also, if you enjoy my tutorials, then follow
the brand new Photoshop Training Channel Instagram page. You can find it @PhotoshopTrainingChannel.