Creative Compositing with Adobe Photoshop

1. Introduction Compositing: Compositing is the art of combining multiple photographs together and making them look seamless, believable and beautiful. I'm Martin. I have over 20 years of experience as a graphic designer, illustrator and Adobe certified instructor. I have worked with companies like BBC, these knee, Google, ikea, and I cannot wait to share my best practices with you. This is a streamline hands-on course focusing on a real life design project. I will be walking you through everything step-by-step and you will get all the exercise files so you can follow along in case you prefer not to copy me. You can also follow my workflow using alternative assets provided. Create something completely unique that you can showcase in your creative portfolio. I am pretty sure this course will inspire you to create something MAC. We will create four unique and imaginative compositions using Adobe Photoshop with the theme of nature and exploration, I will be using both the iPad and desktop versions of Photoshop. You can follow along with whichever version you prefer. For each of these columns, we will be using liters, selections, masking, transformations, adjustments, feel terrorists, and smart objects. Besides all the technical stuff, we will also cover some important graphic design theory that you will be able to apply in any of your future creative projects. You can join this course without any prior knowledge in graphic design, illustration or Adobe applications. But to complete the project, you will need access to Adobe Creative Cloud and a desktop or laptop computer, but now it's time to start creating. So I will see you in the next lesson. 2. Inspiration Adam and Eve composition : We will be creating this collage of images. And like always, you will be able to download the same exact images that I will be working with. And you can recreate something similar to my composition. And then the same board where you will find a stock photos. You will also see some references or inspiration to show you how creative retouching is used in advertisement. This is a very specialized part of graphic design. And whoever wants to get into this particular field has to be very good at Photoshop. Now, for most of the other projects, we use the combination of the tools. But this time, all we need for this project is Photoshop. We will be putting together these images, masking them out and then using adjustment layers to correct their colors and relying on smart objects to make sure we can easily resize images without losing their quality. For this composition, I decided not to advertise any particular product. Instead, I went for the Adam and Eve theme, which as I said, you don't have to follow if you don't want to, you can come up with your own story for your composition. And this is the perfect project to practice visual storytelling, which is a very important skill for every graphic designer. 3. Document Settings, Selections: First of all, let's start with a document. I'm just going to choose the print category that I'm going to set 3 thousand pixels for the width and 3,500 for the height. We will need art boards and the rest of the settings can stay. And immediately one thing I normally change at the beginning of retouching projects is to add a solid color background. So this is the solid color adjustment layer. And I'm going to work with this gray color so that 70% brightness. You can use the same or you can work with something else if you want to. And I normally even delete the original background layer. This is going to give us a good backdrop on which we can work. The reason I don't like working with white backgrounds is that it is easy to miss some details while on gray normally, you can spot most of the issues around your selections. So jumping back to the final composition, I just wanted to show you that we will be starting with the people in the image. So we will have Eve and Adam prepared in this video for the comp. Now in order to be able to work effectively with the images in this composition, I always recommend saving them first as Photoshop files. So instead of placing JPEG images into the comp, It's always better to use PSD files. Let me just show you why I normally do this. So if I place in an image like this one and I accept the placement, then this becomes a smart object, which is great. That's very useful because we can always resize it up and down and we're not losing quality. However, if now I want to add my selection, so I choose Select Subject and then I mask out this image. Now, the mask is not inside the smart object. Why is that a problem? Well, because if I resize this image now and then I resize it back up again, the quality of the mosque will suffer. If I Alt click on the mask, will see how blurry it got because that wasn't stored inside the smart object. So this is very important. You can see if I just undo the last two steps, we have a much nicer cleaner mask, which we don't want to lose. So similarly to the quality of the image, we also want to preserve the quality of our mask. And the best way we can do that is by keeping it inside the smart object. I'm just going to delete this layer mask. Double-click on the thumbnail of this smart object. And if I add the mask here, the same way as I've done it before. If I want to save this image. And you can see Photoshop is telling us that we can save this as a Photoshop file, but now it won't be associated with the column that we started. So that is why I recommend not to place in jpegs directly into the composition. Instead, first, open these images and save them as PSD files. I will make sure this is set to Photoshop and also the other one, save as a Photoshop document. And this applies to all of the images that we will be using for this project. And now that I have the PSD versions, I can drag and drop these into our comp. I will press Enter, Enter again to accept the placement. And now if I want to add the mask inside the smart objects, I can do that by double-clicking on the thumbnail and choose, Select Subject and save that as a mask. And then just go to File Save to update the smart object. And the eyes you can see there's no issue saving it now. And when I close the Smart Objects source document, we will see the mast image already in our main composition. Let's do the same with the other image. Again. I double-click on it, then go select subject, and then save it as a mask. Maybe we can already refine this bit here using the brush tool, making sure that the mask is highlighted and black color is selected. I can just paint over it. And also it's missing detail. I paint over it with white. Now, as I said, don't spend too much time re-finding selections at the beginning because you might not use the images that you've selected. So I'm just going to leave it there for now. I will save this, close it. And now we have the two images ready. We will have to make sure that they look realistic next to each other. They should be roughly around the same size when you have people. And the best way to make sure that they match in size is to compare their hands. Because of course, they can be different in height or there is the closest part of the body that we can use for matching images. Now of course, we will also have to refine and match color, contrast and even the light source in the image. But we will come back to this later. For now, we have these two images ready. And in the next video, I'm going to bring in all the other images that we will need. 4. Adobe Bridge, Image Processor: Since we have six more images, I am going to use Adobe Bridge to speed things up a bit. So in this application, we can navigate to any folders on our computer, but it allows us to be able to do a couple of useful batch processes, like the one that you can find from the tools menu called image processor. I selected the six JPEG images. And once I choose this option, I will be able to choose the save as P as the option and make sure that it's going to save it in the same location as the original jpegs. So I can just run this process. And if I go back to Bridge, you can see all of the PSD files are generated here. Now we can select all of these images, start dragging them and they use Command Tab shortcut to switch to Photoshop or old tab on PC. And once you are in there, you can just let go and you just have to press enter a couple of times to make sure all of these images are placed in. But the best thing is that all of these are now Photoshop file, so we can easily go inside them by double-clicking on the thumbnail. And already here you can see in the tab it's a PSD file, not the JPEG. So once again, we can start doing the selections. I will use again subjects selection, creating a mask. And then I can see a few details here still not masked out, which we can probably refine by selecting the image again and then go to Select Color Range. Then let's click on this color here in the background. And we can increase the amount for color range to make sure it covers that area. We can also see a selection preview with a black mat on here. I think that's done a really good job. Can just click Okay, and then going back to the mask selection, we can feel with the black by pressing Alt or Option Backspace. That's fill with the foreground color. I will check how this looks. I feel like it looks quite good. We can now just paint over these little details here at the bottom, which I am again doing on the mask using the brush tool. With black, I can just paint over these bits. You can also try to use color range to isolate the water. But I feel like it's not a big job to do this. I'm just going to do it now. Once again, this is something you should only do and spend time on refining selections once you are really sure that you are going to use an image in your final composition that might be a little bit too big. Brush size. Yeah, that looks better. And then just have a little bit more water left here. I don't necessarily have to keep all those branch details. I can already start sculpting a bit the image as well. I think that looks good. So let's just save this document, jump back into our main composition and we can check how it looks. Yeah, I feel like this tree will work really well. We can just place it at the bottom for now. 5. Cloud Selection, Refine Edge: From this image, all I need is this cloud. But once again, don't forget First, let's jump into what inside the smart object that we can make a selection with the object selection tool and then turn to selection into a mosque. And then to refine the mask, I am going to double-click on the mask thumbnail, which takes us into the select and mask workspace here first, let's use the Refine Edge brush tool. With this, I can very quickly paint over any details that I don't want to see. All of the edges basically, I am painting over and then also I am turning on the decontaminate colors option. So this is going to help me remove any unwanted blue tones around the edges. And in the output option is going to need to save this as a new layer with layer mask. That is because we are using the decontaminate colors. Let's click Okay, and we will still have the original image in the background if you wanted to. But this new version painted over the edges, just temporarily turning off the mask. You can see that it really ruins the image in a way, but it works very well for the selection. And you will see once I save this, we jump back here. If I turn off all the other images, only keep the ones that we have. You can see how well this cloud is going to work. So it's a perfect selection. Alright, so let me just put this down here and then continue with another image. We have the apple. This is a tiny detail, but still I like to keep it as high resolution as possible. Once again, I'm going to use Select Subject and then mask this out, save this document, and then we can already re-size this. Keep it smaller than, here's another Cloud. Once again, double-click on it first, then select subject again, turn it into a mask, double-click on the mask, and then with the refine edge, I just paint around the edges. I'm using a fairly big brush for this. And then with decontaminate colors, we can neutralize the edges. Click Okay, save this document and we have our second cloud. And you can see already that even the colors of the clouds will need to be adjusted to make sure that they match. 6. Select Sky, Inverted Mask: But for now, let's continue with another image. We have the birds double-click inside the smart object and then select sky this time, which we can then turn into a mask. But because we selected the sky and not the birds, we will have to press Command or Control I to invert the colors of the mask. So now the birds are visible. They are white in the mask. But there's a few details here that we need to fix. First of all, we need to use the brush tool with the black color and paint over the edges here. Then I am going to use the Burn tool with which I will be able to paint over this part here. Make sure that you have the range set to shadows. That way you will be able to remove all of that detail without affecting the actual birds. But if I zoom closer, you will see that there is a halo around the birds, which we can also get rid of it, the burn tool, but it's even faster if you use an adjustment on the mask. And I normally use levels, which is Command or Control L. And here all we have to do is to just get rid of all of these very dark details, which are all of those halos around the birds. So if I click okay, now alt or option click on the mask. We have the refined version of them. Sometimes it helps if you duplicate your image maybe once or twice, to make sure that any semi-transparent details become fully visible. So let me just show you if I have one layer, you can see that some of the details around the wings as see-through. But once I duplicate this layer twice, they become completely solid. So that's another quick and useful technique and we can save this document again, jump back. Now we have our birds. We can order the re-size this. We don't have to worry about losing quality thanks to the fact that everything is set up as Smart Objects. And then the last image, my favorite one for this composition, this really cool looking cliff or rock, which again, we will have two separate from its background. So let's jump into it and then choose, Select. Subject does a fairly good job. But then I am going to also use the brush tool and just paint over these few details here on the left, we will be carving into this a lot to make sure it works for our composition. But for now, I am going to save this and close the document. And then we can just re-size it here in the main composition and place it somewhere to the side. Okay, so that's all the images that we needed. At this point, I already liked to name my layers and there's actually a fast way to name all of your layers. I'm just going to type in birds and then pressing tab, you can switch to the next layer that I will call rock than cloud, than Apple, than cloud. Again, there's three, There's IV. So it's much nicer and neater, easier to find the layers that we need to work with. In the next video, we will start to put things together and create the composition. And even though it is going to still be in a rough state, we will already start seeing how everything is going to come together in the end. 7. Setting up the composition: Probably the most important detail in this composition has to be the Ciroc. So I'm going to start with this and make sure that it's set up in the right place and the right size, then we can compare everything to this. So this could be our reference 0.1 of all, I'm going to use the free transform tool and rotate this rock to maybe somewhere around here. I want to have a nice subtle angle on the top. And instead of using the tip of this rock, which originally was the top, I will actually have everything here on this side. And that's the good thing about working with these images that you don't have to stick to even their orientation, as long as it was still look realistic. Let's just move this somewhere around here and I'm going to increase the size a bit. Okay, that's close to what we will need. So now we can start moving things around. And first of all, and we will have to make the pupil smaller. So let's just select both of these layers and resize them. And also I'm going to make sure that they are above the rock layers so we will be able to move them in the right place. So I will have Eve sitting here on this side, but I will flip this layer horizontally. You can do this from the Edit menu transform, flip horizontal. So this way, she's still looking back at Adam, but he will be somewhere around here. And I would like to have some space between them for the tree. And of course this tree will have to be bigger. So I'm using again Free Transform, start increasing the size. Something like that is closer to what we need, but we also need to make Adam and Eve smaller. So let me just start resizing this further. I think that is getting closer to what I will need. So it gives you enough space between them. And I will also flip this tree because I feel like the light source of these images are more from the left. And it wouldn't be realistic to have more bright details on the tree on the right side. And as something that you should always pay attention to. So to match the direction of light in your composition. Some images doesn't really have a strong directional light like this one. But here we will be able to introduce it to make sure it matches to the other images. Move this slightly higher and we can sit Eve slightly behind these rocks. So it just feels a little bit more integrated like that. I will actually make her even smaller. I think that fits quite nicely now. And then add them can also be slightly smaller. I feel like that looks better Now. We can refine this later, but I'm happy with how this looks. Now let's just move these clouds where they're supposed to be. This cloud should be in front of the composition, like the other cloud will be in the background, but similar to before. This will also need to be transformed. Notice that I even have a shortcut setup for flip horizontal. I'm using function for which makes it much easier to flip things around whenever I need them. So this cloud can be slightly bigger and it should be under the tree as well. So it's almost completely in the background, something like that. And notice how I am using the clouds to add further depth in the composition. So intentionally I'm using one in the background and another one in the foreground. The birds we can use to balance the composition. So I'm going to place them here on the right side and the apple will be able to go or so on the right side. So I will make it obviously smaller, even smaller than that. Again, we can always compare it to a person. We can imagine at them holding this apple. And I think now it's a good size. And we can draw a stem on it or just keep it like this for now. I like the idea of having a single apple there. It makes it more of a focal point and makes it really stand out. And I intentionally chose an image for IV where there is a red dress. So that's creates this connection between the two details in the composition. And now if we zoom back, we already have a good composition, but we will have to do some adjustments, refining some selections. But also I would like to create a more interesting shape for this rock, even though this triangle looks cool and we could pretty much leave it like this if we wanted to, but I prefer to give it a little bit more organic and unique shape, so we will be doing that all in the next video. 8. Sculpting the rock layer: So let's do some sculpting on this rock layer. The way I'm going to do it is by adding an additional mask. Remember that we have a mask inside the smart object, but now we will have another mask outside. And the reason why I am okay with having the mask here, because I know that I won't be resizing this layer anymore. It's already in the place and size that I needed. When I zoom closer, we can see still very high resolution. So it is okay now to have this additional mask here. And with this, we will be able to give this a general shape that will work for the composition. So what I would like to do is first carve off a little bit. On this side, I'm using the mosque and the brush tool with black color selected. So that looks good. Let's just cut off a bit more here. Then we will also want to have this shape coming down this way. And then let's just carve off this bottom a bit. So let's cut into it here. For now. I'm just going to hide the Cloud so I can see what I'm doing here. So first, I'm just going roughly around the edges that I want to create, but then we will refine this. Okay, so let's take a look at this. So without the mask, this is the shape we had. And with the mask it looks like this. And then with the Cloud together, this is how it's gonna look. So I like this. Maybe on this side, I will cut into it a bit more, but we can refine this later on. But the most important thing when it comes to removing details from images and creating unique shapes is to think about how it would work in real life. So what's important is to really pay attention to some details. Like I can see that there is a crack in the rock face here, so we can utilize that and we can make sure that there is some detail showing that if there was rock missing, Let's see here, then that would most likely be a little bit of gap under there. So we have following this line here, I'm just reducing the size of my brush. And this way, it starts to look a little bit more realistic. If you go too far into something, you can always add the details by pressing X on the keyboard and painting with white. Let's just bring some details back here again. And I really like how this looks here. So I'm not going to make any changes there, but coming down further, we can start carving into this a bit more. Once again, let's just try to introduce some details here. I just want to make sure it feels organic enough. We want to avoid too much curvy details because it's a rock. So it should be a bit more sharp around the edges. And there's actually a better tool to create sharp edges instead of working with the brush tool, that is the Pen tool. Now with the Pen tool, I recommend using the combined shapes option and set it to path mode and then zooming closer, I can show you how I would normally do this. I just create straight lines like that. Then close it up and then press Command or Control Enter to make a selection. And then still having my mask selected, I can just fill this in with black. In this case because black was in the background, I use Command or Control Backspace where you can even use the brush tool and just set it to black and then paint over that selection. You can see that this helped to create a little bit more sharp edges. And then we can go into it with the brush tool and just refine this a little bit further so it doesn't look too sharp now. It has a bit of variety. And then here I can go in and maybe just create a little bit of detail as if there is some cracks showing up further in like that. But I would like to also create a few bigger gaps and I think the best place would be around here, so in the middle. So I'm just going to zoom out a bit just so I can see the whole thing together. Then I am going to start masking out this part here. And then we can create a nice gap in here that might be too much, but I prefer to go beyond what I need and then bring some details back so we can go all the way up here. Make it feel like there's almost a split on this rock, which again, you can say symbolizes the split between the two genders. So I think that looks quite nice now, I'm just going to cut back some more details. And once again, we want to make sure that this feels organic enough. So we can use both the pen tool and the brush tool to carve a, some details. Same thing here. We want to make sure this is a sharp edge and then we have some sharp edges further down as well. So it should really feel natural. It can again split this rocket bit here, create a couple of unique shapes. And you probably can tell that I love doing this, and I hope you will enjoy doing it too. You can be, again, very creative here. If you're working with the same image is still, you most likely will end up having a very different result compared to mine. So feel free to be creative really. Okay, that looks good. We should also make this bottom part more interesting. Once again, cutting into a trying to follow the shape of this rock here. And then imagine this in three-dimensional shape. Once again. You can carve into it here. Following the shape of the rock. The crack, we can add that. And then maybe we can also introduce another crack on this side. So I'm just going to cut into eight here. And let's just follow this line up and then bring back some details. 9. Adding depth, refinements: And to make this realistic, we can actually add some depth here. And the way I will do that is by adding a new layer underneath the rock and then using the clone stamp tool. I can sample from maybe this part here, and then just start painting behind those details. But I feel like we need this darker parts. So I just changed my sample and then fill up this part here. And that as well. But that was still not dark enough. So I'm going to pick another reference point, maybe something from here. Let's just try this again. I feel like this darker detail works better. And then let's just add a little bit more up there. And we can just delete back a little bit from this. So we still have just a little bit of gap there. And maybe also here at the bottom, we can carve into this. Show a little bit of gap here as well. But yeah, you can see without this, it would look quite fake. By adding this, we created a bit of depth. It wasn't necessary here. Maybe around there we can add the same thing. So I'm just going to use the clone stamp. And in this case, on this side we can add a little bit of depth. Okay, that looks good. Now let's check this site here. This definitely needs a little bit of extra work as well. Let's use the brush tool and then I'm going to chop this bit off. Like that. Following again the shape of the rock to make it realistic. Yeah, that looks more organic now. And here as well, we can go into it where it separates the two parts. Can again cut into it a bit if we want to using a smaller brush. I think that looks good. And this part here still is a little bit vague, but we will have the Cloud there anyways, so we won't have to spend too much time fiddling around with the edge. But now that we have a more interesting, more unique shape, we can still check how it was before and after. We will also need to make sure that the colors and the direction of light will match the other images. So first of all, I am going to place this layer into a group so the rock is selected and I'm pressing Command or Control G. And I'll just rename this rock. And inside here, I will add an adjustment layer. First, I will start with curves, and I'm going to just drag this up. Now. This is making everything bright at the moment, but we will make sure that it will only affect the rock by selecting the group and setting it to normal blend mode. So instead of the default pass through once we change to normal, the adjustment now only affects the layers inside the same group. But I don't want this adjustment on the whole image. I only want it here to show up on the left side. So I'm going to invert the mask for now by pressing Command or Control I. So that's completely hides the adjustment. And then using the brush tool, making a big soft edge brush, I will be able to paint with the white around the edges that I want to introduce this adjustment. So I really want to focus on this part on the image left side, make sure that it matches the light source for the tree and also for the people. I will also add a bit more light on this part here. Just again, make it feel like this is our light source here on the left side, so the sun is somewhere here outside the frame on the left. We can also add more light at the bottom here. But then I would like to also use another adjustment layer, color balance, with which we can make colors a bit warmer. Again, Simulating setting sun, this we could use on the whole image if we wanted to, which now matches the tree a bit better. But I actually prefer it again to be in the same place where we introduced the light. So we can just copy the mask of the curves adjustment layer and drag it over the color balance layer. So now we can see it only affects those parts that we painted over. By the way, you can also create a group for the adjustments. Plays them both inside that group. And then using the mask on the group, you will be able to use that single mask for both the adjustments. Once again, now we have a group for the adjustments with a single shared mask. So if I select this mask and start painting over details, you can see on both introducing the effects of the curves and color balance adjustments. I'm going to undo this last step and that just maybe paint over these parts here at the bottom. Okay, so let's see without the adjustments and with them, it looks quite nice. And now let's fix the colors of Adam. So first of all, let's add an adjustment layer here, Levels and clip it onto the layer underneath it. So it's only going to affect the layer, add them, and then I will drag this down just to increase the brightness of it. It was really dark before, something like that looks so much better already. It also increase the contrast in the image which it was lacking. And I feel like this could already work. Let's just see from a distance, I think this matches much better already the composition. But I would like to also reduce the intensity of reds and yellows on this image. For that, I'm going to use Curves Adjustment Layer and select red and just drag it down a bit. And then also blue, drag up a little bit. So this is one like adjusting the white balance. What we're doing here, you can see how much more natural it looks. But I actually like that warm tone as well, which we had in the original image. So what I'm going to do is to mask out this curve adjustment on this side of the image. So we will have a little bit of that warm glow still showing here. It's almost like again, the sun is shining on this side. So we can have a bit of those details showing up. Again without and width can also turn off both adjustments and turn them back on. You can see how important it was to introduce them. 10. Adam, refining the selection: I can also see that there are some issues with my selection. So this is the time when we should double-click on the Smart Objects thumbnail and then address these issues. We come here to the mosque and then using the brush tool, I'm just going to use a hard edge brush and paint along the edges to fix these details that we just come here into those parts. And then I switch to white to reveal the missing thumb, finger. And then sometimes it's easier to use the pen tool. To fix these selections. By again, selecting the pen tool, I can just draw along the edges. Holding down the space bar on the keyboard, I can move. The anchor point is that I'm drawing. If I don't place it in the right place, you can see I can adjust it while I'm still drawing it. Then we just come up here. Come down. Again. I'm moving it in the position I needed. And there it is. So all of this can be removed. Command Enter or Control Enter to turn into a selection. And then using Command or Control Backspace to fill in with my background color, which was black. So that looks great. We can use the same technique here again, just using the pen tool drawing. Go with this and then Command Enter. And we can use the Brush tool as well just to paint into the selection with black. Okay, so that looks much better. The same thing we can do here on the left side or just use the brush tool. Slightly faster but not as accurate. So we have our selection removed or improved. Okay, So the hands look good now, we should also fix the hair part. So I feel like if we double-click on the mask here with the refined tool, we might be able to fix this or by switching back to the Quick Selection Tool. We can just paint over this bit. Yeah, I can see that was more hair that were lost on the way. Okay. That's too much now, I'll just undo that last step. There's more parts here missing from the face that we should bring back. And then let's just test this part here. Actually, yeah, this we don't need. That looks already much better. We can click Okay, and then here with the brush manually, we can just paint over edge, make sure we get this right. It's important details here. The I and the hair. Yeah, I feel like that looks good. And then around the chin as well, we want to make sure that this is not transparent. So yeah, I feel like that looks good. Now, let's just save these changes and go back to the main composition. It's a small detail, but it already looks so much better. So that was before. This is after. Again, both the hands and the hair looks much more realistic now. And I will just come down to the rock layer and add a new layer just above it and clip it onto it. Because I would like to add some shadows here to make sure that it looks realistic. So I will pick a darker shade, maybe this color, set this layer to Multiply blend mode, and then using my brush tool with a soft edge and maybe a reduced opacity down to 30, I will be able to paint over some details. So this can be darker. Just under the trainers. Also around here should be slightly darker. So that way it looks more realistic. So adjust on his hand should definitely be darker. And also where he's sitting. I shouldn't be bright details should be completely blocked out almost. Yeah. So we can see it's already starting to look better. That one must be maybe a little bit too much. You can add some dark details here behind. And also here. Let's see scar shadow. Remember the light source is coming from the left. So these parts would be in shade. Let's take a look. This was before, and this is after. Definitely integrates into the scene much better. 11. Eve, adjusting the selection : And with e we will have to do the same thing first, let's just refine this selection. So I go inside the smart object and then double-tap on the mask. So let's see what we can do here using the Refine Edge brush. It feels like it's not going to make a better selection. Or we can check this with black and white. I normally like to see it like this, whether it's recovers the edges of the hair better or not, it seems like it doesn't do a good job there. So I am going to use the Quick Selection Tool and just paint over. And then holding down the Alt key, I remove these edges. So this way we have a better selection around the hair and then we can just switch to the brush tool. Let's just simply painting over these parts. That was a mistake. Let's just undo this and then go back to on white. On black, on white is probably a bit better. So let's just paint over this part here a bit more. Lost a bit too much of the original head detail, and then we can just click Okay, and then here sometimes what I do is to add another layer like gray, and then I can refine my mask a bit better. I'm just going to paint over these bits here. Bit more. There can create a bit of gap here. The goods selection is not always the one that shows exactly what was in the image, but it's more about refining the image in a way that it will look realistic. So you just want to make sure, of course, that you are not missing any details from the body. So you want to have a nice clean edge like that. Again, this part here needs to be visible. And I think for now, that's enough refinement. So let's turn off that layer that we use just to show the issues. And I'm going to save this, close it. And we can see once again before the refinements and after subtle but still important refinements. And then for her, I will also use a levels adjustment layer and I will brighten Hurley are a bit up again, make sure it's clipped onto her layer. You can see that it looks a bit better and we can also add the curves adjustment or so, make sure it's clipped. That's Alt or Option click underneath the layer. I feel like maybe there's a little bit too much green on earlier and we can add a little bit more blue. So we just had to neutralize that very warm tone that was there in the image. But similarly to Adams layer, we can again use the mask on the curves adjustment and just hide these changes on this side. So she still has a little bit of that glow on the left side. Okay. I feel like that looks good now. And the only layer we still need to fix or only part we still need to fix this, the tree for which again, I'm going to use curves adjustment layer, make sure it's clipped. Then we need to again, fix the colors. So I'm going to switch to red and reduce the intensity of red and increase the intensity of blues. Yeah, something like that. So let's just zoom back. You can see from a distance as well that this works much better with the rest of the composition. It feels more like it's a single image as the whole point about adjustments that you want to make sure that the images feel like they belong together. And one quick fix here for the Apple. I just notice that this should also be turned the other way. So I'm using flip horizontal. So again, it has the brighter side on the left matching light source and the direction of it. And maybe we can just move this cloud a little bit higher. And then we can also select everything together now and move it slightly in the middle. And just to finish off, I'm going to add a little drop shadow here at the bottom. So I'm going to create a new layer, just call this shadow. And then using the Elliptical Marquee Tool, I will draw a shape which I will feel with this dark gray that I have currently selected. I picked that from the rock and I never like to use completely black foreshadows. It should always be sampled from the image. We have that in place, but then let's just move this a little bit higher and then go to Filter Blur, Gaussian Blur. And we can crank this up to quite a high amount. Yeah, something like that. And then what I like to do is to use the free transform tool and holding down the Shift key, just squash in a bit the shadow and then just resize it. And this creates like a bit of perspective for our shadow. So instead of being completely elliptical, we added a bit of depth. But what I will also do is to add the mask on this layer. And I am going to just maybe with 40% in density mask out a bit. On this side, it's actually going to be better if you use 10%. And they just fade it out because there's more volume of rock on this side. So it makes sense to keep the shadow stronger there, especially here in the middle. And then it just fades out to both left and right. So that's a bit more realistic. Now, this was without the mask, and this is with the mask. And you can see how simple cast shadow can ground a composition, even though it is an imaginary composition with a floating rock, it's still good to apply the rules that would apply in the real world. Okay, that is all we had to do. I feel like now we have a very believable composition or collage of images. And the best thing is that everything is completely non-destructive. So we are using masks, smart objects, adjustment layers, and anything can be adjusted or further refined at any point. This is definitely the way you should learn to work with Photoshop, because this will allow you to be able to come back and make changes after you get your feedback from the client. And the more smart techniques and non-destructive ways you created things in the first place, the easier it is going to be to make those changes. 12. Sketching - Nature Type Comp: First, I always start with a sketch and that's what you can see here. It's a little bit sped up, but it didn't take more than five to ten minutes. Now, it's very important not to jump straight into Photoshop. So always gets started with a sketch either on paper or digitally. In this case, I was using Procreate, but it really doesn't matter at this stage. So once you have your sketch, that is going to give you a very good starting point for the rest of the design process. And he's going to really help you to focus on those important decisions that you have to make in the general composition without really spending too much time on the small details that can always come later. So even though you have to spend extra time on sketching, it is still going to save you hours later on fiddling around, deciding on the sizing and placement of your elements. 13. Inspiration - Nature Type Comp: Now for the creative process, even before you start sketching, what's important is to have inspiration. So you need to be inspired by something and it can be anything. So, for instance, with this composition, I was inspired by a squirrel and the robin that regularly visits our garden. So I keep seeing them when I look out the window from my studio. And I thought it is a nice idea to turn them into the heroes of one of my designs. Also, when I was a child and we went to a forest hiking with my parents, I always found twigs and played around with them and created small illustrations or even layout texts on the ground very similarly to this composition. So once again, it is just a lovely memory that I wanted to capture here. But believe me, anything can be used as a source of inspiration. So just really have an open mind and try to identify those things that inspire you, the things that makes you excited and make sure you record them and put some effort into capturing them. 14. Considerations - Nature Type Comp: Before we jump into Photoshop and I'll show you the most important techniques used in this process. I wanted to explain what were the most important considerations I made throughout the process. So first it was to keeping it realistic, for instance, trees or was always grow towards the sky. I want it to make sure that these twigs or getting thinner as they go higher up and they are thicker at the bottom. That's just the general anatomy of plants and trees. I also wanted to make sure that there is a comparative size match between the two animals in the comp. The squirrel shouldn't be too huge compared to the robin or vice versa. Another important thing is that branch is very rarely grow in circles or form like a perfect circle. So I wanted to make sure that all those round characters like the O doesn't completely close up. It still should be legible, but it should be still open at 1. And I even changed the a from a lowercase to uppercase letter because I want it to limit the round shapes in the text. Another important consideration was to find that fine balance between keeping things organic and realistic, but also making sure that the text is legible. For this, I made sure that the support thing, twigs and branches are slightly thinner than the actual branches used for the text. I also made sure that the copy itself is quite short, so there's not many characters that I have to fit into this comp. And to keep things organic, I also have to make sure that all the characters are connected, so nothing is just floating in thin air. These considerations were already in my mind when I was doing my sketch. But of course, the sketch shouldn't restrict your design process. It's more of a guide, but then you can further improve it and refine it as you go along. 15. Smart object - Nature Type Comp: Now probably the most important technique for this composition to work was the use of the puppet warp as a smart filter. So let me show you how this works. So here I have this twig on the left side, and I want to recreate this one here in the middle. So I'm just going to hide this for a second. So that's the one that we will be re-creating and zoom closer. You probably noticed that there are a couple of stretch pixels here. So I also want to avoid that and improve it if possible. Let's just hide this and I'm going to use this other layer here. Now, this layer at the moment is not as smart object, so it has the purple layer just so you can see it. I'm just going to call it twig, so we can find it easily. And one of the first things that you might notice is that it's obviously much larger than what we need there, but also the color is different from the other twigs. And that is because I used color balance to match all the colors because these twigs that are clearly not from the same type of tree. So I had to make sure that they match as much as possible. But first, before we do anything, I would always recommend to convert your layer into a Smart Object. So I'm going to right-click here and choose Convert to Smart Object, that is before you start rotating or re-sizing the layer. But you can already mask it out in case you are doing it yourself. So you can have the most that version and then you convert that into a smart object. Now once it is set up as a smart object, we can use the free transform tool Command or Control T. And I'm holding down the Alt or Option key to resize it to the center point. And I am going to also change a little bit the proportions because I want the bottom part to be thicker. Remember I mentioned making it realistic. I'm going to hold down Command Option Shift or Control Alt Shift together and start dragging this bottom point here. And that's the perspective distortion is probably something like that will work. I press enter to accept the transformation and now we can move it closer here. Can also zoom closer. And I think I flipped this around one, so I'm going to do that from the Edit, transform and flip horizontal. I have a custom keyboard shortcut for it, but I just wanted to show you where you can find it. 16. Color correction - Nature Type Comp: Now that we have in place first, let's start with the color correction. Since I have it close to the other branch, we can even zoom closer just to see it. And then this is an adjustment. If we go to the adjustments, we can choose color balance, It's Command or Control B. And if you want to use the shortcut, make sure you have the preview on so you can keep an eye on the changes while you use it. And by the way, whenever you use an adjustment on a smart object, it will become a smart filter which keeps it non-destructive, which will allow you to come back to it and make changes. So I want to make it a bit cooler. It's definitely needs to have a bit more cyan, probably a bit more magenta as well, and a little bit more blue, something like that. Let's see, before and after. Yes, I'm happy with that. Maybe a little bit less magenta. Yep, that works. Click okay, and as I said, this became a smart filter which we can turn on and off. And if I double-click on it, I can come back to it and adjust the values. 17. Puppet warp - Nature Type Comp: So now that we have that setup, the next one and most important one is the Puppet Warp, which we can find in the Edit menu. But before we do that, I am just going to move this whole thing closer to where it needs to be. So I'm again using free transform and just rotating it around a bit and just put the start point here. So I want to make sure it's already set up in the right place. Now we can go to Edit and choose Puppet Warp. And then we have to put down our first pin, which will be here. It's almost like the joints when you're rigging the character in 3D. So I put that down there, and then we can put another one here, another one here. And once you have three points down, you can already start twisting things and setting your character up. So I'm going to want to create that nice round shape. And one thing you want to avoid is to putting these points too close to each other and also to move them too far away from each other. So let's say I have them, please, evenly. And then I start moving this point up here. That works fine. But if I drag it too far, it will start stretching the pixels. So you want to avoid changing the distance from the original pin locations too much. Moving them around is fine, but just make sure you keep the distance similar to how it was originally. So I'm going to add another pin here and again, turn it in there. And that already looks quite good to me. But here's a couple of useful techniques you might want to consider using. If you click on a pinpoint, you can then hold down the Alt or Option key, which will reveal this little additional radius around it or control points. And with that, while still holding down the Alt or Option key, you can rotate the distortion around the pin so you can further adjust the details. I think that works quite nicely there. Let's see this one up here near the leaf. So with this one, you can see without moving the pin, I can adjust that detail quite a lot. I think again, that works quite nicely. And another useful technique is if you hold down the Shift key, you can select multiple points together. Let's say these three points, the ones that turn white are the ones that are selected. And once you then just simply without holding down in your keyboard shortcut, start dragging one of the pinpoints that you selected. You can move them together. So I can have those three selected and just refine this part of the branch. I think that works quite nicely. Now, if you decide to remove one of the pinpoints, you can also use the Alt or Option key and click on the pinpoint that will remove it. And most of the time, less pinpoints is actually easier to work with. So that I think is fine the way it is. Now if I wanted to maybe move this point here in a bit, I could add additional two pinpoints and then individually rotate that up there. And I think that is probably a little bit better again, remember, we have to make sure the legibility of this text is good so we can press enter to accept these changes. And then the Puppet Warp will turn into a smart filter. Once again, we can turn it off, turning it back on, and then it's nicely folds up and we can zoom out, check how it looks from a distance. 18. Masking - Nature Type Comp: I like it, but to keep it realistic, we need to make it look like it's connected to the other branches. And for that, I am going to add a mask, layer mask. So let's click on the Japanese flag here on the bottom and then use the brush tool and probably paint over this section here with black. With black, we can hide details and then we will be setting it up so it blends nicely. If you go to file and delete too much, just press X on the keyboard with which you will be able to add those details back. So that's just simply by drawing with white in the layer mask. So I think that looks quite good. Zoom back. Yeah, I'm happy with that. Now one thing to remember is that if you want to go back and make changes to your puppet warp with a layer mask outside of it, it might not allow you to see the pins. So for instance, if I now double-click on puppet warp, it actually works, but sometimes it doesn't work. So in these cases, all you have to do is to just unlink the mask temporarily. Or what you can also do is to create a group for this layer That's simply by pressing Command or Control G and dragging the mask on the group. That way, it is in a way independent from the layer, but it is still affecting it. If I shift click on this mask, I can hide it and that will reveal those details. Shift clicking on it again will activate the mosque once more. 19. Shading - Nature Type Comp: Now the other important technique that I used here, which made it more realistic is the shading. Because when I start distorting and turning these tweaks around, they won't have a matching the light direction. And that's again, very important to make it realistic. So if I turn off the shading layer that I used, you will see it looks quite flat and we have just not like a cohesive lighting setup in this composition. While if I turning it back on, you can see that we have the light source established being on top. And then whatever is closer to the top is going to get brighter. Whatever is below, like these details here is going to get darker. So once again, let's just turn it on and off. It's almost as if I'm turning on a light from the top. And again, that's just makes it realistic and ties everything together. Now, for this tweet that we added here is currently not showing any detail. But what we are going to do is to set up an additional layer. So I'm going to add that empty layer. I'm just going to call it shading. And then press Shift backspace to fill that layer with 50% gray. And then press Command Option G or Control G to create a clipping mask for this. Now what you see is that because we clipped it onto that layer, the branch is just going to fill it in with the gray color. But what we are going to do is to also change the blend mode to overlay. Overlay the gray color will be completely invisible, but anything brighter or darker than that is going to affect the layer itself. And it is a non-destructive way of using the shading tools, the Dodge and Burn. I'm going to switch to the Dodge Tool, which I normally use in highlights and exposure for this technique. And all I have to do is to paint over the details that I need to brighten up. So that's what I'm doing here. Just remember again, we're thinking or whatever it is closer to the top of our composition is where the light source is. So that needs to be brighter. This detail here again can be brighter. And then I switched to the Burn tool. These tools, by the way, you can find here in the toolbar. So with the burn tool, I'm using it in shadows and set it to 50 per cent. Or you can set it to 100 per cent if you want to work faster. And the only problem using this tool in a 100 per cent is that it goes too quickly to completely black. So like this part here burns out completely. That's something we want to avoid. So I'm just going to go back a bit and I think keeping it 50 per cent will work better. So this part needs to be darker a bit. And then just a few details added here at the bottom. This part needs to be darker as well. That's again, a little bit too much, but this is the good thing about using a separate layer for shading, because even if I go too far, I can always use a gray color and just simply use the brush tool and paint over that section with a soft edge. I can always spread that detail out. You don't even have to use the burn and dodge tools. You can just simply use the brush tool as well. So for instance, if we make it a little bit brighter, something like that, we can use it to brighten up details. And then when we again go back and make it and get darker, we can then add shading wherever we need it. So whichever you prefer, whether the door chart, the burn tool, the most important thing, that it is on a separate layer and it's completely non-destructive. So just so you can see, if I set it back to normal mode, That's how it looks. And if I remove the clipping, this is how it looks. But because we are using it, clipped and set to overlay is going to create the effect that we're after. So just so you can see, when I turn it off, this is without shading and that is the shading applied. 20. iPad project - Turtle: In this lesson and the next one, we will combine multiple images together to create creative compositions. First, we will start making a selection on this turtle, which will be quite simple with the subjects select option. So let's just choose Select Subject. And it does a really good job on here. There might be a few details that we can refine, but I'm happy with this to start working because what we will do is instead of separating our selection from this image, we will just turn it into a mosque to keep it non-destructive. So we would just click on the Japanese flag icon here on the right, which turns the selection into a mosque. We can see our thumbnail here on the top right where the layer is and everything is ready. So we can actually copy the whole thing into another image, which I'm going to do by going to the taskbar and choose Copy layer. Then going back to the home screen, I will open up this other image that I had prepared and I'm going to paste the layer in. The best thing is that it comes already together with its layer mask. So if I make this smaller, we can see better what's happening. I'm also going to rotate the image around the bed. It gets slightly smaller and I think around that size will work maybe a little bit smaller. So the whole idea of this composition is to make this look like it's a giant flying turtle. So I'm going to press Done. So now that it's all set up, first of all, we need to make sure that the colors match because of course the turtle was underwater. It looks a bit weird at the moment. We need to make it look like it's in the sun. So first, I am going to use one of the adjustment layers. I think the best one to start with would be color balance. So let's select that one. It automatically creates the clipping. So it will only affect the layer of the turtle and not the background, which is perfect for us. So I'm going to increase the reds and also increase the yellows. And probably that's all we can do with this adjustment. But then let's add another adjustment layer. Don't forget, you have to always select the image which you want to effect and then choose again, add clip adjustment. And this time I'm going to use hue saturation. And with that, I am going to turn on colorize, set the hue probably a little bit closer to these warm tones here on the left side. And I think the saturation and lightness is actually fine the way it is. But of course this is a little bit overpowering. So I'm going to reduce the opacity to something around there. I think that looks quite nice. Now, maybe one additional adjustment withheld because now by using this latest one, the hue saturation, I feel like the details are getting a bit washed out, so we are losing a bit of contrast. And to make sure, again, it matches well the background, we need to also match the contrast, not just the colors. So I will again select the image layer, choose Add, Clip the adjustment, and then choose levels. And to increase the contrast with levels, or we have to do is to drag up the black point and drag the white point down, something like that. Maybe a little bit more on the black point. And it's starting to look really good. Now I can just go back to hue saturation and maybe increase the saturation a little bit there. Or so. Maybe we can go back to color balance and further adjust these colors. Maybe a little bit less yellow now and a little bit more red, and also maybe just a little bit more magenta, something like that. So what I normally do is when I have multiple adjustment layers is to check each of them. So that effect, turning them off one by one and checking what I achieved with each of them. And you can see how important that levels adjustment was. One other thing that you can also check is what happens if you change the order of your adjustments. So putting levels on top of the other two adjustment layers makes a huge difference as you can see it. But I think it was better where it was originally. I actually prefer this setup. It works quite nicely and I think it almost looks perfect. Now, there's one last thing that I want to add here and that is the cast shadow. To make it really look like this turtle is flying or hovering above the beach, we need to create that nice cast shadow on the beach and on the water surface. So for this one I'm going to do is to select the mask which was created earlier on, and then go into the additional options in the taskbar and choose load as selection. Once we have that ready, we can create a new layer. And I will put this layer above the beaches layer, but below the turtles layer. So here I will generate that new layer, and I will also rename this shadow. And then Viola, I have the selection active. I'm going to use the eyedropper tool to pick a color from the background, something that's similar to the shadows of these trees. And then once we have the color ready, I will switch to the paint bucket tool and fill in the selection. And we don't see it yet because it's under the turtle. But I'm going to tap the select and use the Move tool to be able to reveal the shadow that we created. So that looks great, but don't forget, we need to set this layer to multiply, to blend well with the background. So from the blend mode, we choose multiply. And I will also probably reduce the opacity a bit, something like that. And then to emphasize the distance, I'm going to also add a Gaussian blur to blur out the shadow. You might remember when we created the cast shadow for the girl in the previous chapter, I already explained that the further away the shadow gets from the objects is casting it, the more blurred out it looks. So for that, I'm going to use Gaussian blur, and I will probably use around maybe 20 in this case. I think that looks good. We can increase it even further, but I think that it's going to work quite well. So I want to make sure it's still visible, but much more blurred out. So I can now press done and I can just find a good place for it. Of course, we should also observe the current shadows in the background, so that should be our reference point. But in this case I feel like if I put the shadow this way, might not work the best, but I quite like the way it looks on the water. So I'm just going to leave it here. And that's all I wanted to achieve with this composition. But most importantly, everything is set up completely non-destructively. And that means if I want to, I can go really close and refine my selection. So for example, if I select the mask that we had created with the Select Subject option, now we can check whether it is accurate or not. And I can see around the neck, it's not actually doing perfect job. So we can refine that by going back to the mask itself and use the brush tool with white painting over this section here. And then I can use also the touch shortcut to temporarily switch to painting with black, which I can remove these sections. And now once again, let's check the mask and now it looks much better. And maybe around the head as well, we can refine it a bit more. So I'm just going to paint over this section here. Zoom more closer, holding down the touch shortcut, and maybe making my brush size smaller just to allow me to work more accurately. I can refine these edges. And you go, that's all sort it looks better now. So that's why working non-destructively and especially using masks is so important. Since you don't have to refine your selections at the beginning, you can always do it at the very end once you are happy with your composition. So this can save you a lot of time and allow you to experiment with different compositions and only fiddle around with small details and time-consuming refinements. Once you are a 100% sure that you are working with the right combination of images. 21. iPad project - Floating Island: In the previous lesson, we've seen already how we can combine images together and come up with a creative composition. This time we will combine four images together to create this cool floating island composition. So to get started, I'm going to select the image which is going to be our background. And then instead of copy pasting other layers into it, I'm just going to use the place options. So select the image icon from the toolbar and choose Camera Roll. Select the image with the mountain and the forest. And I'm just going to make it slightly smaller, something around this size and think it's going to work, then press Done. And now that we have it placed here in this environment, we can already start working with this. But just to make things easier, I will already bring in the other images that we will need. So I will need the balloon, which we can also make smaller. I'm just using both of my hands, so we gestures. It's easier to quickly make things smaller just by pinching it. And then I press Done, that's there. And then one more image we will need. And that is the lighthouse. Once again, it can be smaller, reducing size, something like that. Now, since we have the quick way of making selections, select subject, I'm going to already use that here on these two images on top. So I will go into Select Subject, which should do a really good job on selecting this lighthouse. Then I just tap on mask here at the bottom. Or we can also use the icon on the right. It doesn't really make any difference. And then I will just put this to the side. And then from the layers, I'll select the balloon. Once again, select subject and Mask. Alright, but what I will do is to swipe the mosques to the right so I can see the image thumbnails and I will actually hide these two layers. Currently, I will mainly work with the image where we have the mountains and the forest. Now to create this imaginary floating island, we will invert the landscape and move the mountains underneath the forest. So first of all, we need to make a selection. And once again, I will use Select Subject, which most likely will select the majority of the mountains. And I think that's already good. Maybe we can just increase it a bit with the objects selection tool. I'll just select this section here, maybe a little bit more of that. And we can also use the quick selection tool to just paint over this section so we can include more details. I think that's good. And we don't need these details here on the right so I can hold down the touch shortcut and remove the sections by just simply painting over it by holding down the touch shortcut. Now we can turn this selection into a mask by clicking on the icon here on the right. But then I will also need to make a duplicate of this layer, which will be used for the forest. And to be able to do that, we need to swipe again, have the image selected, and then go into the additional options, choose Duplicate layer on this new layer, however, I will swipe back to the mask and go into the filters and adjustment options and choose invert, that is going to invert the mask. So if I move this around, you will see it shows everything but the mountains. So that is great. But what we need is to only show the forest. So what I can do very quickly is to use the brush tool, set the color to white, increase the brush size two, fairly big, and then just very quickly paint over the sky and these details here on the right. So this way we have the forest on a layer, and underneath it we have the mountains on another layer. What I'm going to do now is to use the transform tool and flip the mountains upside down and then press Done. And now we can just start aligning things to each other. So let me just zoom out a bit and then select the forest, move that down. And I think that's a fairly good alignment. We can probably make this slightly bit smaller. I'm just using again, pinching A3 size and a line press Done. Now to make things easier, I'm going to move the forest underneath the cliffs layer that way. I can align it a little bit better. Yes, something like that will work. I want to make sure we can still see this tree here in the foreground. But then now, to make things easier, I'm going to switch to the expanded view of the layers. Now I can select the mask for the forest layer and using the brush tool, I am going to refine the edges. So first I will paint with black so I can hide the details, something like that. It's just refine the size around that detailed looks okay. And then here on the right side as well, we just hide a bit more of the forest. That the background. Yeah, That's roughly what I need. I wanted to create an interesting shape, but then I will switch to the other mask with the mountains. And I'll start to remove some details here in the foreground, just so we can reveal a bit more of this grass. And then holding down the touch shortcut, I can go back and forth Removing, adding, just to create an interesting edge detail here. Yeah, something like that. Looks good. So I will remove a bit more details here on the left side. And then once again switch to the other mask or so removed from that. Trying to create a realistic edge here on the left side, just trying to define that treeline. Okay, So that looks quite good. We can once again do the same thing here on the right side. I will just remove a bit from both layers. And then we'll forget that working with masks is completely non-destructive. So we can always come back and make changes if we don't like some details. That's the beauty of working this way and working non-destructively. I quite like the way it looks already. 22. iPad project - Island, Lighting: But let's not forget that we need also a mountain in the middle of this island, floating island. And that's actually something that we can reveal from the forest layer by simply painting over it with white. I can find that detail that we can use here in the middle. So this mountain detail will be perfect for us, something like that. And since it's comes from the same image, it doesn't even need color correction because it's already matching the same colors. It is generally a good idea to try to limit the amount of images you use in a composition and also try to match the lighting conditions. So don't try to combine images when some of them were at night, some of them are doing the day, or some are in rain, others in sunshine. You will struggle a bit more to combine them. While here you can see I already have a really good match with both the background and these details. Especially because these two layers, the forest and mountains, are regionally from the same image. So all I have to do up here is to use the touch shortcut. And then very quickly paint over the sports just to get rid of that wide detail there. And maybe with a smaller brush, I can refine the edge a bit more, make it more interesting thing that looks quite good on the sides, I can introduce some more details once again, make it a little bit more believable around the edges. And it's really fun to paint mountain details. You can really be creative with it. I think that's fine. And then maybe on this side here we can introduce a little bit more of the trees, once again, building up this terrain. And on the left side, I can remove a bit more of them once more just to create a more interesting edge. Add a bit more rocks on this side. And let's see from a distance. Yeah, I think that looks quite nice. The only thing I'm a little bit worried about is the left side looks a little bit weird here. So I'm just going to add some more Three detail back. And even maybe some more detail here. Just to balance things out a bit better. That looks already better. Now we need the lighthouse and the balloon. So let's turn on first the balloon, that one is the easy one. We can just simply move it here on the left side and maybe make it a bit smaller like that. Now we could always move this behind the mountains and the forests, which would be also an interesting composition, just to show you, we can move with behind it easily. So that could add some additional depth in the composition. But I actually prefer it floating somewhere around here. But then let's bring the lighthouse in the composition. I am going to flip it horizontally with the transform tools because I feel like that lighting works better, mainly on the clouds in the background. I can see that the light source, so the sun is on the right side, plus also the shadows here on the mountains or these rocks at the bottom or on the left side. So on the lighthouse, we should also try to match that lighting direction. But what we also need to do is to select the mask, use the brush tool, and just very quickly paint over these bottom details with black. Now what you can also do to create a more interesting edge is to switch to a different brush. If you double tap on the brush tools icon, you will be able to choose all these default brushes that come with photoshop for iPad. And what I think would work quite nicely here is the mixed splatter. So let's select that. I will zoom closer and make my brush size smaller. So when I start painting, you can see how different this looks compared to the previous techniques. And I tried to replicate how leaves would look like. So you get a more varied edge, then be the hard edge brush, something like that. So let's take a look at it from a distance. I think that worked quite nicely. Maybe a little bit more detail here on the left side. 23. iPad project - Island, Integrating layers: Now to make this composition look more realistic and believable, even though it's a floating island that we're talking about, we should try to integrate these layers to each other. Now to make this work, first of all, I'm going to select all of these layers. So I'm holding down the touch shortcut, selected all four additional layers, and I will put them inside a layer group. Once the group is created, we can add an additional layer mask on it. And this is going to be a shared mask between all the layers inside it. Now you can't have multiple layer masks on a single layer, but you can have additional masks by using layer groups. So this way, we could have our individual layer mask and this shared mask on the layer group. And you will see why this is useful. Once I zoom a little bit closer here, I can use the same brush that we used before. So this is the mix splatter brush set to black color and probably a bigger brush size, something like that. I can start painting over these buttons, details and see how immediately if feels like the clouds are coming in front of these details. So I can do a little bit more here on the right side. And maybe over here, just to create the illusion that this island is really floating in the sky. Now the reason I use the separate group mosque or shared mask for this effect is that it can easily be deactivated independently from the mask that we have on the mountains layer. Using this type of techniques of multiple masks affecting layers can really make a huge difference, especially once you get to these more complex compositions. Now, let's turn the mask back on. And to make things even more realistic, I'm going to include one adjustment layer for the mountains. So I will select that layer at the bottom and go into additional options, add clipped adjustments and choose levels. And what I'm going to use this for is to add more shadow details because the mount is regionally we're above the landscape, not below. And since now they are below, they will get less sun. So the shadows should be much more darker. And generally, all these rocks should be darker than what we can see here on the top. So what I will do is to increase the dark levels and also maybe reduce the output level to something like that. Let's just see how this looks from a distance. Yeah, that definitely looks better. Maybe we can also move this mid point a little bit to the left side. So this was before. And this is after. Definitely more realistic. But I feel like not everything needs to be darker. It's still good to show a few highlights and brightest spots here because they are still above the clouds so they should get some sun. So what I will do is to have the mask selected, use the brush tool. And maybe this time I'm going to double-tap and go back to the original hard brush. And using black with a smaller brush size, we can start painting over some details that might be a little bit still too big, and also maybe a softer brush will work better. So that way I can just add some highlights here and there, especially details that are closer to the ground level, something like that. So this side, I think especially this edge here can be with so brighter because that's where the sun is at. Even all of these parts here. And I think that's already much better. And just as a final touch, I am going to add some additional Cloud details on a separate empty new layer, which will be on top of all the other layers. So I'm just going to call this one clouds and switch back to the same brush that we used before. So it was the mixed splatter and then sample a color from the clouds. And then start painting over these details here. Maybe make the brush a little bit smaller. Yeah, that will work. It's a really cool cloud brush or it works really well for drawing or painting clouds as a one cloud there. And then we can maybe have one behind a lighthouse as well. I'm really playing with the depth here just to build up more depth and to make the clouds more realistic. I will also sample colors from the bottom of the clouds in the background by using the secondary state of the touch shortcut, I can switch temporarily to the eyedropper sample, a color like these more bluer tones. And then I will paint a bit of blue tones here, just underneath the cloud. And then also the same for this other one here. So that just adds a little bit more volume to it, makes it more realistic. But then of course we can also once again sample a little bit more brighter details and just go over it one more time. So this is without one of the clouds, other cloud. And altogether, if I hide my panels, this is what we created by combining four photographs into a creative composition. 24. Conclusion: Well done for finishing this course. I hope you had just as much fun going through it as I had recording it. And of course, don't forget about the class project. Because remember, practice makes perfect. I can't wait to see your work, so make sure to submit it. And in case you like this course, and you would like to learn more from me, then there's plenty of other courses that you can find here. Go ahead check them out now. I can't wait to meet you in the next one.