Adobe Photoshop cc Composite Master Class: Create Complex Photo Manipulation & Surreal Digital Art

1. Manipulation: Hello everyone. My name is Ahmad Raza. I'm a digital artists and creative director working from past seven years. I've been very lucky to work with major brands including United Nations. They are not there. The guide me, Pepsi got rid of Canada, go. I don't know if Pakistan, in this class, I will teach you basic technique of creating complex photo manipulations and a streamline workflow of creating photo manipulation, you will learn some basic drawing techniques, compositing use of advanced Photoshop tools, masking custom brushes, environment creation for different filters and creation of commercial graphics. The class is divided into a few parts. Greeting inspiration, references, idea, then collecting the sources and secretaries and understanding of drying in photo manipulations, 30s, creating a composition and 40th, creating shadows and highlights by masking. And 50s natural elements addition in detailing of our manipulation. So let's start the class. 2. Idea Developemnt & Resources: So first thing, the manipulation is idea. We create idea, we've got inspired, we find the sources and then we start compositing of picture. I saw this picture and this picture given me an idea to create something like that. But two for the other brand, like I wanted to do it for a VR program or a map. So we will start reading this picture and we will see what components are in this picture. And we will collect debt components. There are two sources from the internet are we will shoot them and then we will compose them. This picture, have bird, it have a basket inside. Our children is sitting and playing again. Behind it we have birds flying and we have seen the sky in the background. So these are the components of this picture or this manipulation. If we want to recreate something like that, we have to find these components, but some additional components as valid that sports our idea. I collected some components from the Internet. This is same bird flying. Bird flying. So we can choose the variation which settled first. We have a basket and we have a VR program picture, children playing a game, some row fixes to sport The manipulation stuff. After that, we will go to the Photoshop and slow start compositing. But first of all, we need to create and collect these resources for us to start the word parent, support our idea. Some resources to collect these pictures, we can shoot them or there are before websites like three big fixers which can support your Shutterstock. These website can look by the stroke which you can get free pizza as well from it. 3. Basic of drawing: The second part of class is understanding of drying in photon and population. While doing photo manipulation, we have to focus on two parts of prying. Number one needs shadows and second is highlight. Highlight is a part of object who is facing the light directly or in the direction of light while shadow is apart of object opposite of the light, other side of the light direction. We mostly represent highlights with bright colors and share those with dark colors and dark tones because the highlight is the reflecting surface due to the light facing it. We divide highlight into two parts. Main highlight and the middle don't highlight same. We divide shadow into two parts, main shadow and mid-tone shadow. Whenever we are doing photo manipulations, we have to focus on shadows and highlights because focusing on shadows and highlights, it gives our photo manipulation more realistic effect. Head out. I am going to share with you some examples how we can practically use the shadows and highlights. In this example, our highlight is on the direction of light source and shadows on the opposite direction of light source. And we can see how we can use the shadow as a guide and shadow on the contact with ground, as well as how we can use soft shadow and shadow edges. We have to focus these rules, these points in our photo manipulation. It will help us and provide our manipulation realistic effect. 4. Compositing: First of all, to start compositing, we will open our main file, which is VD, and we will open it in Photoshop. I already opened it. And then we will start tracing out debarred so we can separate the bird from background. We will select Polygonal Lasso tool and start making the selection. You can take your time and zooming the immediate start selecting slowly. You can achieve all the birds details. There's a time taking process, so it will take some time to create the selection of bird. I already created a selection, so we will Layer via Copy the selection. And here is our selection. We can separate it from the background and then we will need a background for the board. We will use the sky background we have here. Will upload it on Photoshop. Selected. Besides it, we need to do little bit of lighter. We need a little lighter background, so we'll just lower its opacity. And behind it we will create a white layer, so it gives a brighter look. After that, we will add starting our elements for the further manipulation, we need a basket over the bird, will put it on the bird. Also, we need to, we need to, we need to lower the position of word just a little. And then we will resize the basket so it looks the exact proportions and relatability with the picture like moss and weird and visual ratio. So it doesn't look FEC. Then we will remove the handles of basket because we don't need the various zones. That requirement of our four, what kind of manipulation we are doing, which purposes we are doing. After that? We will open the fixture of children playing. Game. Head is I am telling you a shortcut for the selection. We can go to a select panel and then we will select subject. It will automatically, automatically select our subject very quickly and we can separate it. Here is our subject selected. We can use Quick Selection tool to refine our selection little bit. We can use Alt tool to unselect the unwanted areas and after that layer work or B and leave the original layer and we have the child size it, and we will flip it horizontally just a little bit soon. Then we will resize it to look just a little bit. After that to do give a look to the children is inside the basket. We will select layer and create a layer mask, and we will hide it all. After that, we will select the brush tool and start creating the selecting the mask once where we need to get that child visible. We will select white color. The mosque will start a building. Yes. Now it's so much better. The child is looking inside the basket. After that, we need to add some elements like, we need to add rope that will bind the basket with birds. So it will look realistic approach. We will select the select Quick Selection command G shortcut to separate the layer from original layer. And then we will resize it according to our requirement. Then we will resize it. Find. Then we will Command T and select the wrap tool. And with the rep tool week, we will give it a little bands. So it gives a realistic look and feel. Like it's originally bended. Then we will copy this layer. The other side of basket as well. We will erase it from there Towards grams. So let's look at some of the other side of broad. Similarly, we will do same thing with the side of the bus, cute, but we will duplicate the layer by selecting the Alt key. We can duplicate it by going through the Layer. Duplicate, Layer. Duplicate, then select it. And we'll read it according to needs. Same we need to draw from behind the side. Then we will raise unwanted ADL focus. So far, we developed our composition and style, but there is no shadows, no fire liars, No detailing. 5. Shadows & highlights: For creating the shadows. This way is very easy and quick way. And this way gives us a margin to get to the legs, or it gives us a margin to change the shadow and highlight layers. If something goes wrong. What we will do, we will garner mosque and lower it down and it will be shared those. But then we will hide all the mosque. We will hide it all by just selecting the background color and creating mosque called black. After that, we will select the brush tool. Lauded size a little bit, and we will start creating dark shadows, are full shadows. It is the part where we have very little light, dog, very good positive direction of the light. A very realistic look and field. After that, we will load some more best T for MIT, the mid-tones of shadow. We start computing wider range of shadows. Everything there light is not reaching or shadows like the backside of y. After dad, we will do same and we will create another mask and we will rise the Karl Marx and increase it highlights. And then we will adjust black older Lamarck so it will hide all. And we will just increase the areas where the light is directly touching the surface. Like the upper area of genes. The head off the edges of things. We will correct. Playing with the shadows and highlights. It takes time to create shadows and highlights. The more time we will give them more realistic look. It will give us girls marks our overall on the plane. And if we do something out of our object, it will impact. So we need to take precautions if we do it. We need to unhide it for it, we will just use the black color and brush it over the required area and with the full opacity and it will hide down. These are the basic technique for shadows and highlights. After that, we will start detailing of the illustration. In the detailing look, we need to smooth, smooth out some, some corners of the will select the white and a little bit of feather will clear it to do. After Dad, we need to detail this illustration a little bit more. We will add some elements. We need to blow, blow to the sky, will duplicate the layer of sky. Go to the filter. We will select Gaussian Blur. I'll tell a bootleg 3.6%, it's perfect. Then the picture is in motion. We need to give a little bit of blur effect to the board as well. We will create the duplicate layer of bird, and we will go to the Filters again, go to the blurred Gaussian, blurred. Enabler. We'll give it a little bit of motion blur and it will give start giving the effect of moving fixture in the motion. We will keep this layer behind our original picture, regional Bert, Bert earlier. So it will, it will not mix too much, but give a decent amount of effect to create. After that, we can split this fact as value with the children picture as well. And we can try if it looks some sort of effect and do it, do something realistic approach with this, it is getting a little realistic approach to our last session, so we will keep it. After that. We'd need to add some stamp brushes already in my Photoshop for the sky. I will put some custom brushes for you as well in the project resources so you can download it and easily install it by just clicking on the icon and it will start installing and you can enjoy using it. After selecting the brush, Sky brush, we will start painting it. Just increased among sky, little bit lower in the sky size. Start giving all about experimenting and styling. We have different style of sky. This one would be perfect. Some parts. Previous guy. By using Smooth tool, we will add this globe as well. It started getting very, very realistic and very professionally commercial approach to our artwork. After detailing, we will do the final touches like playing with overall curves of the picture and highlights of the picture. Then we can pretty much our manipulation is complete. This is very basic and very streamline workflow of creating any type of manipulation. We need to. When you to focus on shadows, we need to focus on highlights and the understanding of drying. The more we understand the drying, the more realistic share and professional manipulation we will create. After that, we will just design it according to our requirement. We will use some text to create it into poster. We can just use it as an artwork. It depends on our requirements. 6. Extra elements: We will try to add some extra elements that will make our manipulation more realistic. For example, we will add flank load on the shoulder of our children. The manipulation, just a little bit of scaling. We will resize it a little bit so it fits the shoulder of our figure. Yes, a little bit more precise. The more we focus on it, the more realistic it will look. Just do more rotation and that little bit of sizing is looking perfect right now. Almost perfect here. We will add the layer mask, reveal the real Mars, and we would remove the layer mask from the front of our children so the flank loads looks flying and behind the in children. It will look more and more realistic feeling our illustration, we will use a hard brush to it really cleared the edges. Shall feed. We will lower some opacity so we can clear the edges very carefully. Look more realistic, and then we will change our best to the 100%. Yeah, I think it's looking perfect. Zoom in and try to check the rotation and angle. Just a little bit too. I think it's perfect. Then we will try to add any other extra element which is vertical. But before that, I think we need to play with the levels a little bit. It would look more with the theme of our manipulation. The word I have a image of a bird. Multiply it, so it would look like on our image and resize it accordingly. Then it is the background with magically and lower the opacity. So it will look so close to our bird, but behind the scene in the background. And try to reduce some birds. I think, into full number of birds that perfect increase the opacity again. Then I will increase our best to or further there as well. It is some birds from that group. I think was used to land. Software is to use our brush opacity to almost a 100% and the opacity will be around 20%. So it will look up. Some birds are fair, they are far away, and some birds are closed. They add more clear. It will look more realistic. I think it's looking perfect now. Yes. We will save our power station is finalized now. I will save the file. 7. Class project: This is the result of our photo manipulation for the class project, you have to create your own photo manipulation with your own idea by following the steps I described you in the tutorial or in the lesson. You have to follow, first of all, creating the idea and then you have to collect the resources and then composition, then playing with shadows and highlights and then detailing. After Dad, when you finalize your project, submit it in the project section so I can have a look and feedback. You and other students as well. Feedback and comments do for the growth. And if you guys have any questions regarding the lesson, you can also asked me in the project section.