Once you get into digital photography
you may well want to have a go at photo montage. Sean David
Baylis identifies the five most common mistakes that you
can make. His advice is good not just for Photoshop but just
about any other image editing softwate you can think of -
Paint Shop Pro, Corel Photopaint, and GIMP, for example.
The 5 Deadly Sins of Photoshop Compositing
Photoshop is a wonderful program that allows you to
edit a photograph in as many ways as you can imagine.
It allows you to control every aspect of a photograph
and gives you editing tools that a traditional photographer
could only dream about. With this wide range of editing
and compositing tools comes the ability to create fantastic
works of art. With the rise in popularity of photography
and personal computers, the door has been thrown open,
now anyone with a half decent PC and a few spare dollars
to buy PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS can and are calling themselves
RETOUCHERS.
In the hands of a skilled user Photoshop can produce
awe inspiring work; in the hands of a novice it can produce
images of extremely poor quality. Unfortunately, as the
popularity of the program grows and people become more
and more exposed to these poor images, this lack of quality
is becoming accepted as the norm. Here are the things
to watch for when creating Photoshop compositions:
1) Feathered edges. When you make a selection, using
the dancing ants around an area you wish to move, change,
colour or otherwise edit, you have to feather the edge
by at least 2-3 pixels (depending on the resolution of
your image), in order to avoid the jagged edges we so
often see in photo montages. Feathering creates a soft
edge that blends the area of the selection with the area
it abuts. Feathering an edge by a high value is also
a useful way to fade out a selection.
2) Correct Perspective. If you have one element in an
image that has a different geometrical perspective that
does not match the rest of the image the whole image
will look odd. A viewer will generally not know what
is specifically wrong with the image, they will just
know that it looks odd and generally undesirable. This
is generally seen in buildings or cars that have been
composited in from other images and not had their perspective
adjusted to match the greater image as a whole. This
would happen if two images shot at different focal lengths
were then combined. An image from a 28mm lens combined
with an image from a 200mm lens will need perspective
adjustment to look right.
3) Correct Depth of Field. Images that have one object
or area in focus and then behind that an object out of
focus, and then behind that another object in focus will
look very odd and be completely unbelievable. Like perspective,
combining images shot with differing depth of field will
require you to adjust the focus of the elements to correct
the Depth of Field. One draw back, while it is possible
to soften objects to make them appear out of focus or
have short depth of field, it is next to impossible to
sharpen soft objects to make them appear to be in focus.
Depth of Field problems are one of the most common mistakes
made in Photoshop compositions.
4) Direction of Light. When montaging images it is important
to combine images shot with the same lighting conditions.
The play of light on an object creates a series of shadows
that have a specific directional play depending on where
the light source was in relation to the object. If you
montage together two images with differing light sources
the image will look unreal and undesirable.
5) Colour cast. All images have a colour cast otherwise
know as WHITE BALANCE, this is the HUE of the white areas.
Also know as the colour temperature of an image. Be careful
to adjust the colour cast of montaged images so that
the white areas look the same, doing otherwise will render
your images unreal and undesirable.
The human eye has an amazing ability to spot subtle
changes in what it considers normal. Stare at a picture
of a pink banana, after a short while the banana will
start to appear yellow, but you will still have the feeling
that something is not right. This also applies equally
to Colour, Focus, Perspective and Light Direction. When
creating montage images in Photoshop it is important
to watch for mistakes in these areas as you will want
to have your images look as real as possible and thus
as desirable or aesthetically pleasing as possible. I
have seen far too many images used in big advertising
campaigns with blatant disregard for these basic principles.
Done right Photoshop can create compelling compositions;
done wrong and it just looks, well… wrong!
Sean David Baylis is a professional photographer who
has been using the popular photo editing program Adobe
Photoshop since 1994 version 2.5. He is considered by
many an expert user and is called on to retouch major
national ad campaigns and art books in addition to his
own commercial and editorial work. Examples of Sean’s
work can be seen at http://www.sdbphoto.com
