Composite Image Creation in Photoshop
Recently I did a photography job at the Stony Brook Staller center. It was my first time doing a concert — along with the limitations and restrictions that you get along with doing a live event. With not being able to move around too much I decided to do some creative shots. Here is the end result:
This is a combination of two separate images, one done with a relatively slow shutter speed and one done normally.
Image #1: Canon EOS 50D, 100mm f/2.8 Macro – 0.5 second @ f/32, ISO 3200, + 1/3 EV
Image #1 - Master Layer
Image #2: EOS 50D, 100mm f/2.8 Macro – 1/400th second @ f/2.8, ISO 3200, + 1/3 EV
Now, to combine the two images, we’ll take them both into photoshop. There are a million ways of doing this, but this is how I usually do it:
- The “master” is the image that more than 50% of we’ll keep. In this case, image #1 since we’ll keep everything but the violinist.
- Duplicate the background layer, so that we have a duplicate copy of the background in the master. This is more of a precaution so that we always have an original layer that we can go back to.
- Click on Image #2, double click on the “Background” layer so that it turns into a regular layer. Drag the layer across to on top of Image #1.
- I renamed the new layer “Violinist”, and attach a mask to that layer.
- I tried to use the “Auto-Align” feature of Photoshop at this point, but it didn’t work (and I really had no hope that it worked, just wanted to see if it could).
- So I used the eraser tool and erased as much as I could on the layer. I really should have done this with a second mask but there was absolutely no information that I wanted to keep.
- Now that I could see the layer underneath, I reduced the opacity of the layer to 30% and moved it so it roughly matched the original layer. The parquet floor pattern was very helpful in this case. (Zoom in as much as you can, it makes life easier).
- Increase the opacity back to 100% on the “Violinist”. Now use the mask that we attached earlier with a very soft brush and erase the outline.
- I also added a Levels adjustment to the “Violinist” layer (clipped it in fact) so that I could lighten up the floor a bit to match the “master”. This way I didn’t have to hide all of the floor.
- Final result is posted above.
- Image #2 – Violinist
