digital photography courses

Tutorial #29 - Small People Big Large Objects

1. First of all, open the file you downloaded called 'man.jpg' in Photoshop.

   As you can see he is in a natural pose, leaning against a brick wall. The first thing we need to do is get rid of any obstructions and then remove him from his original environment

2. Create a new layer and rename it to 'Cloning'. Get the Clone Tool from the Tool Box or press the 'S' key. Make sure that the 'Use All Layers' option is ticked in the Clone Tools options box.

3. Ok, the main things that need to removed are the leaves on the shirt sleeve and the hand. Choose a small-soft brush and zoom into one of the areas. Begin to clone out the leaves. Remember to reset the position of the Cloning Source regularly to avoid repetative patterns.

4. When you have removed the leaves, use the Flatten command from the Layers menu. Now we are ready to remove him from the wall.

5. There are various ways to remove a subject from one photograph and placed onto another. To save yourself some work in the following stages, remove the man as described here for now.

   Get the Lasso Tool from the Tool Box and draw a rough selection around the man, getting as close to his outline as possible.  
   

6. From the Edit menu select the Copy command. The man is now stored on the computers clipboard.

7. We now need to open the second image supplied in the downloadable zip file. Open the 'camera.jpg' file.

8. From the Edit menu select the Paste command. The image you stored on the clipboard will now appear on top of the camera.

   Press CTRL+T to active the Free Transform command. Hold down one of the Shift keys, place the mouse cursor over one of the corner 'handles' and shrink the man. He doesn't want to be too small. Place him in front of the battery which is protruding from the camera.

   Hit the Enter key to set the new size.

9. Now that we have the man in position, we need to make some small but necessary changes to the camera image. Because the man is stood in front of the battery, you need to cast a shadow on the battery.

   Get the Burn Tool from the Tool Box, and set its Opacity to somewere between 50-60%. Click on the camera layer to activate it. Carefully darken the top part of the battery, as a real shadow would.

10. Ok, we've taken care of the shadow on the battery, so the same thing needs to be applied to the camera itself. Look how the man is positioned and imagine his shadow being cast onto the camera. Using the Burn Tool, darken the areas needed.

11. The only thing remaining now is the shadow under the man himself. Create a new layer and place it under the layer of digital photography courses the man.

12. Using the Airbrush tool, select a dark gray colour from the colour palette, and set the Opacity of the Airbrush to about 45%. Once again, imagine where his shadow would fall and spray the dark gray. It doesn't need a lot, there are no long casting shadows here.

Sit back and have a look at your work. Different isn't it. You can have hours of fun creating similar images to this one. Check out the 'Reflections' image in my gallery section.