Krista Composite
You may remember the 2 part post I did on Krista's shoot a couple months ago. This is a follow up. I knew when I did the shoot that I wanted to do a composite. In other words, I wanted to take Krista's photo and replace the white background with another more visually interesting background. Here's the process I went through to get this piece for my portfolio.
I wasn't sure what I wanted to use for a background, but I knew I like the area where we did our shoot. We ran out of time to shoot in the area and also wanted to create an image with a greater dynamic range for a more processed look. The image below is what I wanted to create. A processed image, that had a very polished and commercial feel to it.
I went back to the location and shot multiple exposures knowing that I would need to produce an HDR image. I'm not a big fan of HDR because most of them are over processed and look really fake. For some that's exactly the look they are going for, not for me. That's where I had started my process.
I selected the image in Lightroom and exported them into Photoshop to process as HDR. I also processed one image in Lightroom for comparison (it's the second image at the top). Sometimes just processing in Lightroom looks better to me than the HDR process through Photoshop. I know there are a lot of other programs that perform better than Photoshop for HDR processing, but I don't do HDR often enough to justify the expense.
As you can see, I get a lot of detail back from the HDR image, but it looks dull and flat. The details in the bright areas, like the sun are too sharp (for my taste).
I brought in the image I processed in Lightroom and overlayed it in Photoshop and masked out some areas until the background looked more like I wanted it to look.
Once I got the background closer to the way I wanted, I moved onto selecting the image of Krista. I liked a more powerful pose and look and went with the image below.
Krista has a great look and features and great skin. However, the skin still needs some smoothing out. We're so used to seeing beauty shots of women with flawless skin, that even Krista requested to have her skin to look smoother.
Here's a closeup of Krista's face for comparison. Nice light, great skin, but at this magnification, we get to see all the details in the skin. It needs some smoothing out.
There are seveal ways to smooth out skin and if you talk to 10 different re-touchers, they'll tell you ten different ways to do this. I'm not a retoucher, so this is my way. It may not be the best way, but it works for me and gives me the results- I'm looking for.
First, I make a copy of the original layer and work on the copy. I use the "Surface Blur" filter in Photoshop - Filter>Blur>Surface Blur. You can also use Smart Blur for a similar effect. Since I was working in 16bit mode, I could only use Surface Blur. I'm not sure what the settings were that I used. I would recommend experimenting with various settings until you get the look you want. Working on a hi-res file, the same settings will be significantly different on a low-res file. Notice how much the skin gets smoothed out, but leave the eyes untouched. The hair is affected by the blur, so I end up masking that out to reveal the original file below.
The skin get smoothed out nicely, but it looses some sharpness. At this point I make another copy of the original layer, desaturate, and run a High Pass Filter (Filter>Other>High Pass...). I set the layer property to "Hard Light" and adjust the opacity. For hi-res files, 40% seems to work for me. For low-res files, 20-25% opacity seems to work. If I leave it at 100%, it looks too sharp and overly processed. I'm trying to achieve a style that is not overly processed.
Now that Krista has been retouched, it's time to separate her from the background. I'm working in Photoshop CS4. In previous versions, a filter called "Extract" was available under the "Filter" menu. For some reason, this specific function is not a default install in newer versions of Photoshop. It comes on the install disk as "Goodies". If you do a search on Adobe's website, you'll find a link to down load this additional filter. Once installed, it makes the process of extracting the foreground from the background a lot easier. First make a copy of the original layer. On the copy, you take the highlighter tool and trace around the edges making sure there are no gaps, then use the paint bucket tool to fill in the selection. When finished you'll see the image extracted, however, it's not perfect. Typically is doesn't do well around hair, especially when you can see the background through the hair. I select the transparency of the layer and use that selection to create a mask on another copy of the original layer. At this point it becomes a little tedious, but you start drawing/removing from the layer mask. I use a Wacom Intous 4 tablet and pen, which makes it a bit easier to control.
Here's the images extracted from the background.
The next step is to place the cutout of Krista over the background we've already created.
I wasn't crazy about the sun behind her. There was a little bit of sharpness in the clouds and the sun was too yellow. That's not typically what I'd see. The sun would be blown out and there would be very little if any details in the clouds.
I added a layer of white and added a layer mask, selected Overlay for the layer property. I also added another layer with a lens flare.
This is more of what I wanted it too look like.
Below is the final image.
It takes alot of time to do this kind of work. I don't do it on a regular basis, but when I do, the results really surprise me. This is by far one of my favorite images, which is why it's the first one in my athleteic portfolio.
I hope I get around to doing more of these. It can be a frustrating process of trial and error, but the finished product is definitely worth the work.
