In this video
I'll show you how to replace
a plain gray studio background
with something much more exciting.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey
and you're watching AdoramaTV
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Well I do love shooting
in my small home studio but just
occasionally the limited choice of
backgrounds can become a problem but
it's not really a problem if you have
some basic compositing skills and in
this video I'm going to show you how
to replace a gray background in the studio
with a massive wall of sound background.
So that's what we're going to do.
Let's get some lights set,
let's get a model in,
let's get shooting.
So it's great to have
IF-E back into the studio.
IF-E is going to be the model
for this shoot but he's also a Grime Artist
and we'll get him to do some performing
in just a little bit,
that should fit in perfectly
with the wall of sound background.
Now when you
have a close look at this background
you can see that there is actually some
direction to the lighting on it
and I want to try and replicate
that in the portrait.
You don't have to but it just adds
that touch of realism.
The lighting direction
is kind of coming from above.
Now I prefer to shoot the backgrounds
first because it's easier to change
the lighting direction here in the studio
than finding a location
where the lighting matches
what you shot previously.
So if I've got light coming
from above that's what I want in the
studio. I've got an eVOLV 200
on a boom arm,
to spin that around and pop it just
above IF-E like so.
The background I've got here in the studio
for the portrait
it's just a plain grey paper background.
That works fantastically for cutouts
because it's a nice easy clean
background to cut out against
and if I make any little mistakes
gray background, gray final background
in the composite that should work together really well.
However to make life a little bit easier
there's a couple of things I can do
in the photography stage.
The first one is to think about shadows.
Now there's always going to be shadows
in your picture.
In this case the shadows
are going to fall down here
away from the area I'm shooting
because if you think about what would happen
with the shadow?
There's a shadow behind IF-E
and IF-E is wearing dark clothes
it's going to be really hard to see
where the clothes stop and the shadow starts
for the selection.
So no shadows is what I want.
I can always add them in later.
Another thing that I can change later
is the depth of field,
I actually want now to shoot with a big depth of field
get the whole of IF-E in focus,
I can always change that later as well
but think about this,
I'm selecting over his shoulders
and they are all soft and blurry
well it's going to be very hard to make that selection
but if they're nice and crisp,
it makes making the selection
that much easier.
So I'm going to shoot to f/8 as my aperture.
Now remember I'm using an Olympus Micro Four Thirds
camera which gives you more depth of field
than a full-frame. If you were shooting
with a full-frame camera think
about maybe f/11 or f/16.
It's also a good idea to have a look at the background.
What sort of focal length lens
would have taken that shot?
Well I think it's at the longer end
so I'm going to try and match that
with the portraits by shooting them at the long end
of my lens.
Okay let's take a test shot like this
see how it works?
Now I've already meted this out for f/8
so I'll take this shot,
here we go IF-E
and when I do you can see that IF-E is
correctly exposed but the background
is a little bit on the dark side
and the reason for that is simply
because of the inverse square law,
the light is quite close to IF-E
which makes the background that much darker.
Now a couple of things
we could do to correct that. We could
push IF-E back towards the background
but then we run into that shadow problem
I spoke about before. I could move the
light further away but then that has
implications as well. So what I'm going
to do is add a second light just for the
background and this is it it's another
eVOLV 200 and it is literally going to
go right in behind IF-E and its sole job
is just to put a wash of light back here
to make the background brighter than
what IF-E is wearing not so bright that
it actually adds to the picture, there is a
fine balance between the two.
Let's see how this looks.
That looks great.
We can clearly see that the background
is a different tone to what IF-E is
wearing, that again should really help
make this selection that much easier.
So that's all there is to it with the lighting,
very simple now we just need to
take some great pictures,
so IF-E are you ready?
Okay let's take some pictures.
Well there we go that was some great
shots there. We've got some brilliant
pictures of IF-E,
all we need to do is cut him out from this background
and add him on to the wall of sound
and I'm going to do that right now.
Making a really good composite image
takes time which we don't really have
in this short video,
however this is my quick and simple
composite technique. It generally works
really well and it makes use of the illusion
of depth of field so for that I need to start
with the background.
Let's have a little look,
so this is the background I'm going to use
my wall of sound.
If you want to use exactly the
same background, you can download it
from my website www.gavtrain.com
There's a link in the description below.
First thing I'm going to do is blur it by
going to filter and convert
to smart filters, click OK
Now this allows me to
change the blurring effect later
if it doesn't look quite right.
Then I'm going to go back to filter
down to blur,
Gaussian blur
and I'm going to go for maybe 8 to 10
pixels somewhere in that range, click OK
Now I need to go and get the picture of
IF-E there was plenty to choose from,
I've already added this one in RAW so
this is the one I'm going to use.
I'm just going to go to select and all,
edit and copy,
close that picture down
and choose edit and paste
to bring it into the scene.
So now he's part of the picture
but obviously I can't see the background
because I need to remove the current
background so I'm going to select that
using the quick selection tool.
You could either select IF-E
or select the nice big gray background
because that sounds like a lot easier thing
to select to me.
It's not perfect I've lost part of his ear
so let's just choose to remove where
it went a little bit too far, like so,
and I think it's a little bit on the other
side I can see as well
so let's try and get that too.
Okay that looks pretty good,
now I don't need the best selection in the world
but it does help to start with a pretty good one.
Next I'm going to click on select
and mask which is a feature in Photoshop cc.
If you're using an older version of Photoshop
there are other ways of using the masking tools
I'm going to use select and mask
and then I realize of course
I've got the selection back-to-front
but I'm not really worried because I know
there is a button here that says invert
and that will get my selection the right way round.
I don't need the best selection
but I do need a reasonably good one
and things to watch out for
are any areas you've missed,
like this little bit of beard here
and halos. So let's start by getting
rid of the halo. Now to do this
I'm going to use the edge detect
it's also helped with part of the hair
as well I'm going to put it up maybe 3, 4, 5 pixels
somewhere in that area. Next I'm going to come to shift
pixels or shift edge, I'm going to shift
them in maybe 20% but no more than that
just so I have a slightly tighter
selection and then finally the thing
that really gets rid of the halo
on this image is to turn on
decontaminate colors.
It works really well with a lot of images
however if it doesn't work with your
image then do try any of the other
sliders because they all have impacts
and it will work differently
for different pictures. I've also chosen to
output just to a new layer.
Right what about this part here
so anything that you've radically missed.
You can use these selection tools
on the left hand side,
I'm just going to add into the edge detect area
by just using that brush I'm just painting like so,
now this I would normally go around the hair
if I was doing a real advanced selection
but as I say we don't need
the world's best selection
so maybe just a few areas
where there's a halo or two but other
than that I'm quite happy with that.
I'm just going to click OK
and let it do its thing.
So I've cut IF-E out
and he's on the new background
and it looks reasonably convincing
but not very
to really make this work
I need to do the shallow depth-of-field
not just on the background but also on
IF-E so his shoulders, his ears, the top of his head
they were all going to blur
into the background.
So let's do that by going back to filter
and again I'm going to choose these smart filters
and click OK.
That adds a smart filter and allows me
to go back to filter
and blur Gaussian blur.
Now because depth of field becomes
more of the further away from the focus
point, it's going to be less on IF-E so
let's change it from 8 to 1/2 let's go for 4
and click OK now that blurs all of
IF-E and I only want the edges blurred
so to make sure that happens
I'm going to come down to the layers
find the layer mask
and click it,
get a little sort of rectangle round it there
and then I'm going to go to image
adjustments and invert
or I could have just pressed ctrl, I command
on the Mac. My mask is now the opposite color
it is now black and I'm going to get a paintbrush
and make sure that my color
is the opposite to that
which is of obviously white a
really big brush, really big
and then a big soft edged brush
just paint all around the edge of IF-E's
shoulders, his arm and his ear
and I'm going to go around
and do the the top of his head
and the other arm and shoulder
and so on okay so it's not quick, it's not neat,
but it just blends it in really well
to really see what's going on,
I need to go in a bit closer
you can see we've got that
shallow depth of field effect on his ear.
That looks pretty good
but you do need
to watch out if his ear was blurry
then surely his jacket would be as well so
let's get a smaller brush
and just make sure that those areas
are nicely blurred too,
there we go obviously time spent here
will be rewarded with a better result
but for now that looks pretty good.
I'm kind of happy with that
anywhere you go wrong,
let's just say you go wrong here
and you accidentally blur an eye
completely, simply swap over
to the opposite color
in this case black
and I'll bring the sharpness back
through okay so that's
pretty much done.
I can of course move IF-E around
if I select the IF-E layer
and then get the move tool
we can move him around in the image,
so we can pop him anywhere we want
to go and with a bit more time,
fine-tuning image adjusting the contrast.
There it is, there's my final
composite image completed.
For more information
on how to do composite photography
check out the
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I'm Gavin Hoey,
thanks for watching.