- What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here and today, tonight, this evening,
we're talkin' about how to fake stuff in your photos.
And ooh, it's gonna be a good one. Boom!
(rock music)
Is faking stuff in your photos,
is photoshopping things into your photos
that weren't there originally,
is altering things to make them look better,
is that cheating?
No, I don't think so.
These tools are here for us as photographers,
filmmakers, as artists,
these tools are here for us to use.
So I like to use whatever is at my disposal
to get the best possible outcome that I can.
If by adding something that wasn't in a photo to a photo
makes it better, in my opinion,
I'm gonna do that.
I still think that's fair and,
no rules, anything goes.
Here's a picture of downtown Toronto
taken from my friend's loft,
overlooking the Toronto Island.
Gray, overcast, not that exciting.
What can we do with this?
Well, we could punch it up, make it way more dramatic,
bring in those clouds if we can,
maybe add new clouds,
fix the reflection in the side of the building here,
maybe add some lightning.
That's exactly what we did,
(camera shutter clicks) and we get something
that looks like this.
Now we've got that reflection
of the lightning in the window,
the clouds are much more dramatic,
everything in this photo looks a lot more edgy
and just interesting to look at
opposed to the way it did.
Is this cheating? No.
Is it faking the photo? Absolutely.
But in this case, this is okay to do.
These tools are here so that we can use them
to our best advantage.
So that's what I'm gonna teach you guys today.
Okay, so we're gonna start with something small.
In later tutorials we can work our way up
to the more advanced stuff adding tons of elements,
but let's start with this photo I took,
on my way from Toronto to Hong Kong, of the Arctic Circle.
We flew over the Arctic Circle, it looked incredible
and I ran to the back of the plane
with my wide-angle lens, stuck it through the window,
and fired a thousand shots.
This was one of the ones that I liked the most.
Now, in this instance, I don't need to photoshop anything,
that's a pretty extreme shot through an airplane window
with some pretty awesome subject matter on the other side.
But most of the time when I take pictures
through airplane windows,
I'm looking at like a parking structure
or some train tracks or just a bunch of trees,
or the airport itself, nothing really interesting.
But we can change that to make it look way more interesting.
So that's what we're gonna do in this photo.
So pretend that this isn't a cool picture
of the Arctic Circle,
pretend it's a crappy parking structure
that we want to change.
So first thing's first,
I've got a couple images here to choose from.
We could replace that, we could replace those mountains
with the Golden Gate Bridge,
we could replace it with Paris, or Las Vegas.
I'm gonna show you what each one looks like
but I think I'm going to go with Paris,
so we'll copy that, and we'll paste it into this photo
but we're just going to turn this layer off for now
because I don't need it yet.
First thing's first, I'm going to double-click
this background layer and name it Window,
so things don't get confusing.
I'm gonna go over here to the left side
and click on Rounded Rectangle tool,
and I'm going to draw roughly the same size shape
that we have of our window and I'm going to hit Enter.
This is what we got, essentially we're gonna make a mask.
And what a mask is, is it's gonna let us put something
behind the photo so that that photo
shines through the hole we made using this mask.
So what we're gonna do,
we're gonna try and size this mask that we made here
to the same size as the window.
So hit Command-T to bring up the image size adjustments box
and first thing's first, we're gonna rotate that
so it fits kind of the same shape
that our window is fitting.
Now a tip to do this is to turn the opacity down
to something like 30 just so you have
a good idea of what you're working with.
Now, no matter what way we turn this,
we're not going to get the perspective right.
So what we have to do is hold down Command
and then drag those corners in while holding down Command
to best fit the perimeter of that window.
I like to go a little, just a little bit past
the actual outline of the window,
and I'll explain why in a minute,
but you just don't want it to be exact,
because then sometimes you gotta go back in,
delete the mask, and adjust the-- ahhh!
Pain, pain in the ass, so just hold down Command,
use these anchor points here, and drag that rectangle out
as close as you can get.
Right here, I'm gonna go up a little bit,
let's work on this corner,
sometimes it takes a little bit of finagling, if you will,
and let's bring that to here.
Now when you think you've got as far as you can
and you're like, "You know what,
I just can't get the top right, can't get the rest,"
you're going to keep it selected,
right-click, hit Warp, now we can drag these black points up
and see how that warps the entire shape
into something that fits much better.
We're almost done here.
Let's just drag this up a little bit more.
And like I said, we're gonna go a little bit above,
and then we can hit Enter and take a look at our shape.
It's pretty good, I'd like it to come out just slightly
on the right side here, so we can Command-T,
right-click and hit Warp,
bring that out just a little bit,
maybe bring that top down slightly on this side.
Okay.
Pete, stop, that's good enough.
This is our mask.
Let's bring that opacity back up to a hundred,
this is what we're working with.
With a little more time you can get it
so that the top edge right here isn't so wavy
because I don't think any airplane window
actually has a wave going on at the top,
least no plane that I want to be in.
Now this is important,
the layer that you want showing through the window
as your new image needs to be on the bottom.
So copy this, drag that to the bottom.
Now what you wanna do is hold down Command and click
on that Rounded Rectangle Layer.
And that's going to give you a selection of marching ants
around the entire rectangle we just made.
Then you're gonna, while that's selected,
you're gonna click on Window
you're gonna come down here, while that's clicked,
and select Create Layer Mask.
This is what happens.
Don't be alarmed, don't touch anything, just hit Command I.
We're going to invert that to get rid of everything.
So now essentially, what we've done is,
using this shape as a guide,
we've punched a hole through this window picture,
we've punched a hole in it.
So if I hide this rectangle,
that transparent background right there
is just a hole in the photo.
So anything that we show behind it is gonna come through.
So now when we turn on this layer, that's Paris.
Boop! There it is, behind that window layer.
So let's Command-T that,
let's come down here to the Paris shot,
zoom out a little bit.
Command-T to drag that down, and there it is.
So now we can size that.
It's also important to note that you wanna pick a photo
that's realistic, like maybe something
that was taken from heights
so that when you're looking at it from an airplane window
it just kind of, it kinda makes sense, it lines up,
like you wouldn't put a photo of like, a kid playing soccer
out of the plane window because it just wouldn't really
make sense at all.
It would be hilarious but it just, it's not gonna work
in this instance.
So you're gonna wanna pick something
that you've taken in the past, something like that,
that's gonna make sense with what you're doing.
So keep that in mind.
So, that is looking good.
I'm happy with that, right about there.
So that's pretty cool.
Now here's one problem that your eye probably picks up on.
This edge of the photo here, is way too sharp.
We need to blur that out a little bit
so that it feels a little more realistic.
So you're gonna go over here to where your mask is,
in the Layer Panel, double-click on that
and it's gonna bring up this Properties Menu
where you can change the feather.
So watch, if we drag that feather hardcore it looks horrible
but what we can do is just drag that feathering enough
to like maybe five, that it blurs the edges of that photo
and makes it feel a little more realistic.
So I'm gonna keep it around four.
I'm happy with that.
Now last thing is because this Paris photo
is black and white and this plane shot
that I have for the window is blue, we need to match that.
So click on the window side of the layer over here
and then you're gonna go up to Image, Adjustments,
Hue Saturation and let's just drag
that saturation right down,
bring that darkness down a little
because if the outside is perfectly exposed,
that means the inside would technically be almost black,
it wouldn't be perfectly lit like this
because you just can't expose for both inside and outside
when you're on a plane tryin' to shoot for the window.
So you're gonna wanna dip those blacks
down a little bit more. (hip hop music)
Something like that would be cool.
And you're gonna hit OK.
So now, look what we've got.
We have a shot through an airplane window of Paris
that looks absolutely insane.
So pretend those mountains weren't there at the beginning
and it was a parking structure.
So we've gone from a parking structure
to the Eiffel Tower through a plane window
and that looks insane.
You drop that on Instagram,
people are gonna be just mashin' that Like button,
hearts are flowin', it's a good time to be had.
So that's a very, very cool example.
So let's kill that saturation,
let's get rid of this Paris shot,
let's just hide it, for example.
And what else could we do?
Let's come over here and use Las Vegas for example.
Let's copy this, paste it here.
Boom, paste it straight in, move that over.
That actually looks like,
without almost any adjustments at all,
that we are flying into Vegas right now.
You could put the reflection
of something in someone's sunglasses.
This portrait I took of my friend Cyril,
he's a magician from Japan.
(camera shutter clicks) He flew in for a shoot.
I did this portrait,
I was happy with it but I thought,
"It's just missing something."
So I put a picture that I took of the Brooklyn Bridge
in his sunglasses, just to give it a little more Fpah!
And I think it works great.
Another example would be my friend Gabriel here.
Some facts to know about this photo: it was not raining,
there was no lightning, the GoPro was not turned on,
neither was his headlamp and his face was not wet at all.
All of those things were added in post
using the same sort of techniques,
now that's a little more advanced,
and in further tutorials, I plan on covering that,
but it could also be something as easy as just
photoshopping in an airplane
to something that you already took.
This looks like I stood between these two buildings
for four hours waiting for the perfect moment
to capture this plane just passing through the two sides
but I just posted that in in Photoshop.
And that's it guys!
That's a quick one today, just something that you guys
can keep in your back pocket to further enhance
the photos that you're taking.
And all of these tutorials, all of these little tips,
all of these little tricks
that you can do with these programs
and applications and using light hits
and replacing photos with other photos
and photoshopping portraits to look better,
all of these things end up building a huge arsenal
that you have that ends up being like a big toolbox
so when you take a photo,
you're gonna start thinking in terms of editing
because you always wanna shoot to edit.
When I'm taking a photo out in the field
or out in the real world,
opposed to the fake world (laughs),
I'm always thinking about, "How can I edit this?
If I shoot this, can I then shoot this window
and put that picture in that window?"
And when you start thinking in terms of your skills
and abilities with your post-production
on top of the photography skill that you already have,
that's when you can really start pushing your limits,
your own limits.
And you start producing work that is completely next-level
and really creative in terms of
what people see on a daily basis.
So thank you for watching.
Hope you guys enjoyed that tutorial
and I will see you in the next video.
Peace!
(hip hop music)