Tuesday, December 02, 2014

The Making of a Composite Image

This is the story of how I made this photo, which is a composite of two photos.


It began by taking a picture through the missing pane in the barn at the cottage. I held the camera over my head and took a few exposures and settled on one to process.


It was okayish, but after a long time of letting it simmer, I decided that I wanted to see something more interesting through the panes.

So, I thought this one shot at Wheelers might make a suitable interior.


After bringing the images into separate layers in one Photoshop file, I did some masking to put them together. Somehow, I couldn't get the two images to look right together although I settled for some darkening and blurring of the interior shot. This result is below.

After all the work was done, I saved it and then re-opened it in Lightroom ... and decided that it didn't work as well as I hoped. For one thing, I wished that I had left the panes more opaque to draw more attention to the view thru the missing pane.


Darn it all, I had flattened the file and lost my selections and masks, so I started from scratch and imported this image instead.


On my first try, I inserted the whole image and saved the photo, thinking I was done. IIt had taken two layers of masking to get the opaque effect that I was looking for.

But then, once again back in Lightroom, I decided that the fence didn't look right in the thru-the-window view,  so I re-opened the file. Thankfully I had not flattened the image, so the selections and masks were still available for editing. I am a slow learner, but, sometimes at least, I do learn.

Anyway, I selected the layer(s) of the interior photo and used the transform tool to pull it out until the fence was gone from the image. Hopefully, it now looks more or less proper, and you may notice that I did achieve the effect of making the part of the room behind the glass, dimmer.


So, here is the finished image one more time (the same as at the beginning). It was an interesting project that I undertook on a whim, and I am happy enough with the result.


16 comments:

TexWisGirl said...

aren't you mister crafty!! :)

ADRIAN said...

Nice job. I'll give this a go on a rainy day.

Hilary said...

Keep it up and you could be teaching Photoshop classes. Nicely done, AC.

Linda Kay said...

I enjoy reading about your photoshop adventures. Love those old tools on the wall.

Gail Dixon said...

Very clever! I've always admired your PS skills.

Unknown said...

Me too.

Tabor said...

I do not really understand masking and always have a problem trying to use it. I love the textures and subtle tones of this photo which draw the ye to the tools.

Pearl said...

neat. I like the walk thru. getting around finicky edges while masking gives my whole arm the shakes from the sustained concentration.

you can 'shop anything but after I do a long bit of it it motivates me to get in SOOC for a while.

Ginnie said...

As I've told you many times... there are many people taking photos but few are artists like you!!
Isn't it sad about Philip? That sweet man does not deserve ill health and I'm so glad his son was there to prod him into seeing a Dr.

Jackie said...

Wow!
Just wow!
I'm impressed.
I have Photoshop, and I have Lightroom. I have never used either of them. I feel inadequate even thinking about trying....but you give me courage.
Hugs,
J.

Mage said...

I almost understand what you are doing....did I say thank you.

Mara said...

I need to do a photography course! I am so jealous of your photos.

Pauline said...

I love what you did here. I haven't been around blogland much and have now spent ages pondering over your other altered reality posts. I don't have the patience to 'play' with photos but I sure love the results.

EG CameraGirl said...

Sounds complicated to me but I want to try it sometime.

Dogman said...

Jolly good, old chap!

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Another good hands on lesson, AC, although I must confess that masking has always confused me somewhat and so I usually have avoided it.