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 p.4 #10 · (final) Basketball Team Photo Tutorial | |
In today's session, we are going to clean up the cutout a bit, create the reflection effect, and blend it in with the floor. You will decide how shiny you want your floor to be... anywhere from mirror shiny to a soft luster finish. The photo in the beginning of the post is with a floor that has a soft luster finish. Before getting into explaining how to refine a cutout, this would be a good time to explain exactly what a mask is and why it's always a better option over cut and paste.
Take a look again at the last couple of screenshots from the previous session. Notice how the "team cutout" layer has two thumbnails in the layer: the original team photo along with what appears to be a white cutout in the exact shape of the team we cutout. Think of a Photoshop mask in the same way you would think of a face mask. The mask simply covers up parts of the face while the cutouts of the mask reveal what's underneath... mouth, nose, eyes... whatever. A Photoshop mask behaves the same way. It covers or hides the elements of the photo you don't want to see while revealing what you DO want to see.
In the "team cutout" layer, the second thumbnail is the mask. The white part of the mask represents the visible part of the original team photo, while the black represents what's being "masked" or hidden. The little chain link between the mask thumbnail and original team photo indicates that the two thumbnails are linked together; that the mask is hiding that specific photo. What makes masking so powerful is that the original photo is not altered in anyway. It's always there in its original untouched state. And that becomes important if we ever need to reveal parts of it that we accidentally hid during the project. If you cut and paste a selection and that selection is rough in particular areas, you have to go back to the original photo, select it again, fix the selection, and cut and paste all over again. But, in masking, you don't have to go back to the original photo. It's already there on its own layer in your project. And because it's there, we can modify on the fly with ease. In essence, we can use the brush tool to "paint" areas of the photo back in or out as needed by altering the mask we created. We are going to do that to cleanup the cutout.
PART 4: REFINING THE CUTOUT:
1) In your output file (Team_Final), use the magnification tool and zoom your image to about 200% in the area you want to refine. In the example below, you'll see where I missed areas around the hair in the original selection. Basically, our mask is too loose in these areas and not covering all that it needs to cover. We are going to fix these areas by "painting" in more of the mask. Start by selecting the brush tool from the tool bar. Choose a brush size of about 20-50 pixels at 90% hardness (see screenshot). Brush size and hardness will vary and experience will dictate. There might be tight areas where you'll need a tiny brush to fix the cutout and you'll also see that particular areas of your cutout will respond better by using a softer brush. Hair is one those areas and you'll see later on where I will soften the brush to fix the hair and make it look aesthetically better.
2) Once your brush is selected, click on the "team cutout" mask thumbnail. Notice that your foreground and background colors in the tool bar will automatically change to black and white. That's okay. We want that. When painting in mask mode, no other colors will be available other than black, white and the grayscales in between. In this mode, the brush is not used to paint in the traditional sense. It's used to either add to the mask or subtract from it and we control how hard we want the edges of the mask by selecting the hardness of the brush. We add to the mask by "painting in black" and we subtract from the mask by "painting in white". Since we need to add to the mask (cover up more of the original photo), we are going to paint in black, so I have to make sure that my black color is the one that's in the foreground (top color in the tool bar).
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/11_refining_the_mask.jpg
3) I'm now going to use my brush to refine the heads of the two players you see in the window.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/12_hairfix.jpg
4) Oops... see where I made a mistake and let the brush accidentally take out the ear of the player on the right? Not a problem when working with masks. Just switch the color so white is the active brush color and paint the area you want back. This is the power of working with masks. I also changed the opacity of the backdrop so you could see the edge of the hair against the background.
5) While on the subject of the player on the left notice how the arm has picked up some of the ambient light and left an orange fringe. This may not be noticeable to our customers, but it is to us, so we are going to fix it by adding to the mask. One of my steadfast rules about cutouts is never be afraid to mask more of the player than what actually is... do be afraid of masking less of the player and leaving a fringe or halo. I often see this with cutouts... a halo is left. It's noticeable. But, if you let the mask go past the true edge of the players by 2-3 pixels, no one will really ever notice and it will look just fine. I'm also going to take this time to refine the edge of the shoulders and other areas you see. Compare the difference when done.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/13_shoulderfix.jpg
6) I didn't really want this tutorial to be about cutouts, but in the overall process, you want your final product to be the best it can be and that means our best possible cutouts. You'll also notice how I used the burn tool to give a little depth the edges of the two players. It's subtle and you'll have to scroll back and forth between the last two screenshots to see it, but it's there. Using the burn tool in select areas will give the cutout some dimension and make the your cutout look less like a flat paper cutout against a background.
I also want to show you how to refine hair that is curly and/or doesn't look natural as a cutout. Although most of the players in the photo have straight hair for the most part, some hair needs to be fixed to avoid that paper cutout look. Take a look below.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/14_curlyhair.jpg
7) When fixing hair that looks flat against the backdrop, we want to soften the brush to as much as 0% hardness depending and allow the hair to blend in with the background a bit. I'm going to choose a brush at 50% and carefully brush the edges of the hair (adding to the mask). Then at the end, I'll use the burn tool to give it some depth. Here is the result. Scroll back and forth to see the difference.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/15_curlyhairfix.jpg
If everything looks kind of ratty, don't forget that the last few screenshots are at 200% and the entire cutout needs to be cleaned up a bit which was done in the original final product. Making and refining cutouts take the longest amount of time, but once you gain experience doing them, it can go reasonably quickly. And that's all the time I'm going to spend on cutouts. Let's move on to creating the reflection.
PART 5: MAKING THE REFLECTION:
1) After we have refined the edge of our cutout by adding and subtracting from the mask, we are ready to create the reflection and create, "the magic in the final photo". The rest of the project from here on out goes reasonably quickly.
Click on the "team cutout" layer and duplicate the layer by clicking (CTRL+J). Rename the copied layer, "reflection".
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/16_duplicate.jpg
2) Since we aren't going to need to refine the mask in the "reflection" layer, we are going to discard it by "applying it to the layer". Plus, we are going to need to make another layer mask for it later on, but don't worry, I'll get to that. For now, right click the mask in the reflection layer and select "Apply Layer Mask".
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/17_applylayermask.jpg
Your mask should now disappear and the only thing that should appear is the cutout of the team.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/18_reflectionlayer.jpg
3) Make sure your "reflection" layer is the active layer and click Edit/Transform/Flip Vertical
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/19_flipvertical.jpg
4) Move the inverted team photo so it lines up with the baseline of the bottom row. This is your first opportunity to see how well you did in lining up your bottom row in the original team photo. If you did it right, the upright photo and inverted photo should line up near perfectly. If there were problems in lining up your bottom row in the original photo, there will be gaps. If you're close to what it should be, you'll be fine whether you select a high gloss floor or luster floor. If you're far off, you may have to opt for the luster floor because it will hide those gaps as you'll see.
Even though your final product isn't done yet, by lining up your two photos, you'll see that this project is really coming to life. What once was a flat two dimensional photograph, now has a real sense of perspective and dimension. Check it out!
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/20_reflection.jpg
5) We are now going to refine the reflection to make it look more real. The best way to perfect reflections is to study real reflections and how they behave against all types of surfaces. One steadfast observation is that they tend to lose opacity as you move from baseline to foreground (away from the floor). In other words, the reflection is strongest along the floor and weakest away from the floor. We are going to create that effect by creating a new mask on the "reflection" layer and using the gradient tool.
Start off by clicking "Add Layer Mask" from the layers palette. Make sure that the "reflection" layer is selected before doing this.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/21_layermask.jpg
6) You should now have two thumbnails in the reflection layer... the cutout reflection itself and a blank white rectangle. In essence, the mask behaves in the same way as it did before, the only difference is that you haven't actually created a mask yet. If you want to experiment, click on the blank thumbnail. Select a large brush. Click on the black color and paint over the reflection in the window. It should disappear much in the same way as using the eraser does. Only difference is that if you switch to the white color and paint over what you just erased, you basically paint it back in again. Pretty neat, but watch now how powerful this mask feature can be. Besides painting in black and white, you can also paint in different degrees of gray. By doing this, you are painting the actual opacity in which you want your photograph to appear. Try this... click on the black color picker and choose a gray color. Now, using the paint brush, paint over a piece of your reflection and notice what happens. You haven't erased the image, but you haven't actually kept it there untouched either. It's somewhere in the middle. It works much in the same way as altering the opacity of the eraser tool works, only with much more flexibility. Because we can alter the opacity of the mask, the gradient tool becomes our best friend when creating realistic reflections. Here's how we do it.
7) Before we modify the reflection, we want to be able to see the entire reflection without it running off the workspace and since we have some empty space above the team cutout, we are going to move both team cutout and reflection up. To keep both images linked together, click on the "reflection" layer and then while holding the CTRL key, click on the "team cutout" layer. Move the entire group upwards.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/22_up.jpg
8) Click on the mask thumbnail on the "reflection" layer. Click and hold the paint bucket tool on the tool bar and change the paint bucket to the gradient tool. Only black and white should appear as the foreground and background colors. Now, access the gradient editor by clicking on the gradient bar up top.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/23_gradientselection.jpg
9) When the gradient editor comes up, there should be a preset titled "Foreground to Transparent". Select that, leaving all other options in the dialogue as is.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/24_gradienteditor.jpg
10) After returning back to main window, make sure that the mask in the "reflection" layer is still selected. Using your mouse, press and hold where the reflection meets the team cutout and drag your cursor downward and past the actual edge of the workspace as shown below.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/25_gradientdrag.jpg
11) Through the magic of gradients and masking, we now have a reflection that is more realistic and we are almost done with the reflection. (NOTE: In some cases, when dragging the gradient, you may get the opposite effect where the area closest to the floor is transparent and the area closest to the edge is opaque. If that happens, undo the gradient and either check or uncheck the box that says "reverse" next to the gradient bar up top. Redo the gradient drag)
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/26_gradientcomplete.jpg
12) We are getting near to completion of the reflection for a high gloss floor. If opting for a luster floor, it will require a couple of more steps after completing the reflection for high gloss. Right now, the reflection is looking good, but it's a little heavy and is competing with the team photo. Simply change the layer's opacity to about 40%- 50% and see how you like it. You really have to experiment to see what you like best. For this, I'll choose 40%. I'm also now going to move both the team photo and reflection back to its original position by selecting both team and reflection like I did in Step #9 and moving it downward. Don't forget that we also have complete control of where the backdrop meets the floor, so I'm moving that upward a bit too. We now have this.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/27_reflectionopacity.jpg
13) This next two steps are arguable. Some say that you need to change the skew and scale of the reflection to completely sell the effect. Your customer won't notice it and you'd be fine with this photo as is. If curious though... here ya go. Click on the reflection thumbnail in the layer (not the mask) and then click Edit/Transform/Skew
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/28_skewmenu.jpg
14) Grab the bottom left edit point and move it slightly to the right while looking at the H: window up top. As you move the edit point, you'll see the numbers in the window up top increase. You'll want your H (Horizontal) degrees to read 2.5 and your V (Vertical) degrees to remain at 0. Once the left edit point is set, move the lower right edit point to the left until it reads -2.5. Once again make sure vertical degrees remains at 0.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/29_skewdone.jpg
15) Keeping the reflection thumbnail in that layer active, click Edit/Transform/Scale. Pull the lower middle edit point downward until the H percentage reads 105% or just type 105 in that window up top.
http://www.playballphotos.com/Team_Photo_Tutorial/30_scale.jpg
The reflection for the high gloss floor is now done. In the next session, we will modify the reflection to literally reflect varying degrees of luster of the floor from a slight luster to a very soft luster. We will also add a slight shadow to the team to further complete the 3D effect. And finally, as a bonus, we will add a team mascot, team insignia, or logo onto the floor. Stay tuned...
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