Happy Tutsday my lovely readers! Today I’m showing you how I did yesterday’s B&A:
1.} I took two separate images. I tried to place Tink in a place where the background was close to her own colours to easily separate her from her surroundings later on. It was taken with a bounce umbrella at camera left. This is the unedited image of Tink:
2.} Then I took Peter’s photo, again with a bounce umbrella at camera left. Lighting isn’t necessary. I just didn’t want the shadows and noise I ended up with in the trial round.
3.} I edited the images in Lightroom using presets but I won’t include those details because you can do whatever you want to pre-edit your images.
4.} In PSE8 (Photoshop Elements), I started with Tink. Using the selection tool, I painstakingly selected all around her often toggling between the two different ones.
When selecting an area like her arm which was close in colour to the wall, I had to use the brush tool because PS has trouble telling the difference between the two colours and the selection area jumps into places it doesn’t belong. Soon, I’ll write a detailed tutorial on how I use the selection tools. This is how it looks with the line of marching ants around Tinkerbell:
5.} Select >Feather to feather out the selection just a tad (0.8 px)
6.} Ctrl+J (cmd+j on a MAC) to make the selection into a new layer:
7.} Click the layer with the background and then delete it with the trash can icon underneath the layers. You’ll be left with just your subject.
8.} Go to your main image and then drag the Tink onto the image:
9.} Drag the Tink and resize her onto the jar
10.} Using the selection brush, I selected the area of the jar under Tink. Make sure you have the background layer selected as you’re making the selection so you’re actually selecting the jar under Tink. Tip: if you want to undo all the selection you have made, you can hit ctrl+d to remove all ‘marching ant’ selections to start over.
11.} Once you have the jar area behind Tink selected, typs ctrl+j to make a new layer out of it. In the layers pallette, drag the jar over Tink. Then I slid the opacity down to 30%. This puts her ‘inside’ the jar.
12.} Flatten image
13.} Tink is now in the jar and you can proceed with any other sort of editing you’d like. I edited the image using Florabella textures as follows:
14.} Using the quick selection tool, I selected the foreground (Peter, the jar and the table) and then did the usual selection > feather 0.8 px and ctrl+j to make a new layer so the back and foregrounds can be edited independently.
15.} On the background, I used Mai Tai (from the new textures pack II), soft light mode, 100% and Hazelnut, overlay mode, 37%. Then I used the Tea Stained overlay layer from the textures pack I at hard light mode, 13%
16. On the foreground, I dragged another tea stained overlay. In the layers palette, drag it above the foreground and type ctrl+g to paste it onto the foreground without touching the background. Then overlay mode, 48%.
17.} Over the whole thing, at the top of the layers palette, I used the grunged edges overlay from textures pack II. Mode = normal, 100% Here’s a look at my palette:
