As part of my “Creating Shadows” Blog series, I want to do a few posts on surface shadows. If you have not had a chance to see the other posts in this series you can view them here: 1. It’s In the Shadows… 2. When You Hit A Brick Wall… 3. The Point of Contact 4. How To Select … Continue reading Surface Shadows: Dodge the peaks and burn the valleys….
Breaking it down… For this blog post I want to focus on one more technique for creating cast shadows. There will be times when your light source is very close to your object and that will require the objects shape to be reflected in its shadow. In those instances, where you need that detailed shape, having an action set for it would be … Continue reading Using Photoshop’s default action to create cast shadows…
Yesterday, I shared how to grab an object’s cast shadow and pull it into your new image. (View post here). This technique is a dream!… when it’s possible. HA! However, as you may have noticed, you need an uncluttered, smooth surface in order to execute it. There will be times where you just don’t have that luxury and … Continue reading Adding cast shadows by hand…
Have you ever wished you could select an object’s shadow from one image and drag into another one? But you don’t know how to just grab the shadow without grabbing the background? Well… where there is a will, there is a way!! For this “Creating Shadows” post, I’m going to share a really neat method for grabbing an object’s cast shadow … Continue reading How to select objects with their shadows intact…
As promised, today is a continuation of my blog series on compositing shadows. I believe lighting and shadows are the most important components in creating cohesive and beautiful compositions. If something in the image looks “off” it will distract the viewer take away from your story line. If you have not had the opportunity to read the first two blog posts you may review them here. Lesson 1: It’s in … Continue reading The point of contact…
This is possibly the single biggest question I get, outside of how to draw realistic shadows. How do I make the colors, on the different elements of my composite, match? This happens for a number of reasons: light source and white balance settings are the most common. If you are not able to photograph all the pieces … Continue reading Pick a color palette, any color palette… (A trick for making all the colors in your composite match.)
Today’s stock is dirt and tree roots. HA! You may wonder why in the world anybody would need these stock photos, but these elements of nature can be metaphors for SO many things. Have you ever seen images that display not only what is on top of the earth but under the earth as well? Have you … Continue reading Free Stock Saturday! Finding your roots…
Over the next few posts I want to cover what I consider to be the key to believable compositions and that is creating shadows. If the shadow an object casts looks off to the viewer’s eye, then the image will scream composited. If you introduce an object into a scene, then that object should be lit from the same … Continue reading It’s in the Shadows…
Cheat Sheets Hot Keys. For years I used the drop down menus and interfaces in PhotoShop. When I started using hotkeys my workflow was cut in HALF. Yes, I’m serious. I became twice as fast at editing when I learned them. At first hotkeys are a pain in the ARSE. You have to stop, pull out your … Continue reading Feelin’ hot hot hot…
Is using stock photography cheating? I would like to start out this post by saying, the use of stock photography is somewhat of a controversial topic. Some camps feel you don’t really create your artwork if other people shot everything in the image for you. Some camps think it’s okay to use stock for small segments of your … Continue reading Stock Photography: Should you use it? Where to find it…
#SharingItForward 