Compositing doll photos

I've been thinking about opening a thread for the discussion of tools and techniques
for compositing doll photos. Over the past few years I've practiced, read books, taken
classes and practiced more to where I'm becoming reasonably proficient finally.

What finally pushed me over the edge to put this out was a request yesterday in a
thread by shyld asking for help in creating a reasonable simple composite from a photo
she'd taken in front of a blue screen as though the blue background were enough.

So here we go with a basic primer on compositing your doll photos...

1) You absolutely need a layered work flow so you can isolate your doll in one layer and
the background in a lower layer.

2) I find blue and green the most difficult background colors to deal with because I almost
invariably get color contamination at the edges of the selection.

I have three sets of neutral backgrounds, white black and gray. Mostly I use the gray but
when my kids are mostly in very light clothing I go to the black and when they are in
dark clothing I'll use the white one.

3) It is essential to be able to select your image. The selection process becomes easier
if you light the subject for selecting. I use a diffuse main might exactly in front of and a bit
above the subject. Then I add a light on each side to provide increased edge definition.
a 3 light set up illustrated here.

Light-1 by Tom Beach, on Flickr

This illustrates the set up. In actual practice I'd move the subject away from the background
further and soften the light more.

This is one of my finished composites.

Windswept by Tom Beach, on Flickr

If there is interest, next time I'll discuss selections and selecting tools.

I'd also like to hear from others about their workflow and have them share composited work here.

 

I hope some of that made sense.

While I do a lot of compositing I more frequently photograph my
kids in front of a poster print made from one of my photos. The
background in the lighting image is a half sheet of mat board
which measures 20x32. I get 20x30 poster size prints made at
Costco for $9.99 each. Then pose the dolls in front of them.

The result looks a lot like this

Fantasy Girls by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

You can do this with any camera at all.

 

Compositing - 1 - Selection

So you've taken your background photo and you've taken your foreground
and it's now time to put them together into a single composited image.
Photoshop includes several selection tools to help you along and there are
also third party plug ins that are designed to make this process easier.

Personally I like to use the simpler tools whenever possible so I usually
start with Photoshop's magic wand tool. This tool selects all of the pixels
of the selected color or within a selectable range of that color. Going at it
this way you'll want to select the background and then invert your selection.
Magic wand has the option to select only contiguous pixels or pixels anywhere
in the image. I like keeping this set on contiguous so I don't get surprised when
it selects pixels within my subject. I'd rather add more pixels by selecting in
a different area of the background.

If magic wand doesn't work for you then try Photoshop's Quick select tool.
This is more sophisticated than the Magic wand tool in that it looks for edges.
As with all Photoshop selection tools you can adjust the selection by adding
areas to the selection or subtracting areas from the selection.

Whether you have selected your subject with Magic wand or with quick select
you will want to run it through Photoshop's refine edge tool. With refine edge you
can soften the selection by feathering and eliminate the fringe by enlarging or
shrinking the selection. It will also create the mask you will need later when you
actually create the composited image. One really nice option of refine edge is
that it will show your selection against either a black background or a white
background so that you can see exactly what the edges look like.

In the next post I'll look at some of the third party tools.

Yellowstone Crystal by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Compositing - 1b - Selections continued.

In addition to the built in Photoshop selection tools, which we've not exhausted yet,
there are task specific 3rd party tools. I don't pretend to know them all but two that I
am familiar with are "ReMask" by Topaz and "Perfect Selections" by On 1 Software.
Both of these tools operate either as stand alone utilities or as plugins with Photoshop
or other compatible editing programs.

I love the Topaz filters! They offer a marvelous range of filters to enhance your photographs
or add artistic flair to them. Their "Impression" filter is one of the absolutely finest art
effects filters I've ever run across. But I digress. ReMask. ReMask provides a sophisticated
set of masking tools with immense power. For many images you can simply paint roughly
over your background with the intelligent "remove" brush.

The normal mode for using ReMask, involves drawing an outline of your image with the
compute brush; fill the interior with the keep fill and the exterior with the delete fill. It
works best if you use a finer brush on good clean edges and a softer brush on less well
defined edges or over loose hair. The latest version of this program includes support for
translucency. I've used this tool quite successfully though on occasion I have trouble
adding and deleting from a selection. As it creates a mask you can always go back to
Photoshop and edit the mask directly.

Perfect Mask works exclusively on color variation. Like ReMask it operated in a stand
alone mode or as a Photoshop plug in. Through On One software's version 8 it was a
stand alone tool but with Version 9 they rolled it into their Perfect Layers product which,
for me, made it more difficult to use. Too bad really as it was my go to tool for difficult
selections. As with ReMask, Perfect Selections includes intelligent cut and keep brushes.
The heart of the tool, though, is the capability to define colors to keep and colors to
delete. Then when you paint over the edge with their "magic brush" It deletes the cut
colors and keeps only the keep colors. It also handles translucency iin stride. They
also include a chisel tool which will cut a very few pixels off the edge to remove pesky
fringing.

Both Topaz and OnOne have tutorial videos and webinars about how to use their
products.

The image of Sophia in front of the ocean I shared in the first post was selected
with Perfect Mask. This image of Isar in Yellowstone was selected with ReMask.

Isar in Yellowstone by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Thank you for reading them. I was commenting to a friend this weekend that while
I am pleased that folks are reading this thread I had rather hoped to create a dialog
and that really isn't happening yet. I still have hopes though. The next tip is coming
later this week.

 

What light you have is less important than what background you have.

Now it is possible to cut a doll out of any background. It's just that it
is ever so much easier to cut a doll out of a plain background. Ideally
you want a background that is a plain color, neutral gray and provides
contrast with your doll. Avoid highly saturated backgrounds as they
tend to contaminate your subject.

I believe that Adobe introduced the quick select tool in version CS5.
I also believe that the refine edge tool was introduced at the same
time. As these are essential tools I would highly recommend that
you get a version with these tools. Therefore anything later than
CS5. Adobe no longer sells Photoshop. The latest version, CC
is only available as a subscription. Their photographers package,
Photoshop CC and Lightroom (6?) costs $10/mo and insures that
you have the newest versions of both programs.

 

Grounding your subject:

OK, You selected your subject, created the mask and layered her
over your beautiful background only she looks like she's floating there.
How do you ground her? I'll discuss three common techniques.

1) Don't show her feet!
This is automatic when your background is water such as a lake or
seascape. In the first post to this thread I included an image of Sophia
with a seascape background. As she's only shown from her waist up
she's obviously seated and has the ocean for a background. Your
mind takes care of the rest.

A lot of modern composites are highly textured and very dark. If you'ret
going for that look then fade the lower portion of your image to nearly
black. This is not my personal favorite technique but can be quite effective.

2) Hide her feet behind something. Two posts ago I showed Isar in
Yellowstone. Her feet are behind a rock. I accomplish this by selecting
something in the foreground and bringing that into a layer in front of
my subject. Here is another example

The Watcher by Tom Beach, on Flickr

3) The commonest technique is to create a shadow.

If you have highly directional light you can often create a duplicate
layer from your subject, fill it with black, reduce the opacity and warp
it to the shape you need for the shadow.

Kyle's Dream - 1 by Tom Beach, on Flickr

If the light source is really off axis you might well want to take another
shot from the direction of the light source and create the shadow layer
from that one.

If you have a highly diffuse source, usually the case with my work,
then you will need to draw the shadow in using the Photoshop
drawing tools. I totally suck at art but even I can get somewhat
believable shadows by using a soft brush at low opacity and building
the shadow layer. Start with an empty layer underneath your subject.
Never ever draw things on your subject ot background layers. Work
on a separate empty layer. That way if you totally screw it up you can
delete it, create another and start over.

 

Though this image is a composited photo, this is less about compositing
and more about the technique used to give it that well worn look.

In photoshop the screen blending mode is commonly used to produce
white lettering or graphic on an image. It drops everything that's pure black
and retains anything white.

I found a photographic image that had predominantly dark tones and
also had creases and scratches. Then I used curves to make the image
almost purely black or white. Next I painted with black to cover any
remaining image elements. Then I pasted it into a layer over the image
and used the screen blending mode to combine them.

Tattered by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

More about Shadows

A couple of posts ago I talked about filling your selection with black and using it to create a shadow
for your composited doll. That's fine if the sun is pretty much behind your camera but what if it's
off to the side. When that's the case you need to take another photo of your doll from the direction
and properly from the elevation of the sun.

Two-Views by Tom Beach, on Flickr

I didn't have the camera high enough here but it will serve to illustrate.

Now you can use the front view for your figure and the side view to create your shadow.
The final composite will look like this.

Don in Garden by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

About using textures.

One of the currently hot trends in fine art photography is to overlay your image with a texture.

Unfortunately most textures not only include the texture but also have color information.

Therefore applying the texture also imparts a color shift to the image. This presents a quandary.
If your subject, doll, is showing her face you may not want to texture the face. Still, you probably
do want to maintain the color shift over her face. The easy solution to keeping the texture off
the face would be to simply mask her face out. That does not solve the coloration though. You'll
not only mask the texture but the color.

There is a fairly simple yet elegant solution for this.

You will need to have the texture on its own layer, usually above your base image.
Also, you'll need to reduce the opacity such that you tell where you'll be painting
relative to your image.
Working on the texture layer, use the eyedropper tool to select the color of the texture.
Be sure that you sampling a large enough area that you'll get a reasonable average
color; at least 9 pixels across.
Now that you have the color picked, paint with that color on the texture but over all of
the areas of the base image that don't want textured. At this point there is no texture
over the areas of your image that you're protecting, only the plain color.

Now you can go ahead and choose your blending mode and opacity.
Applying a textures is a marvelous time to experiment with other Photoshop
layer blending modes; Soft Light and Overlay are popular blending modes for texturizing
your images. Consider Soft Light blending mode with an opacity in the 60% area as a
starting point.

Vintage Violet by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

While I don't want to harp on this, for years my only light was a North facing window. One of my favorite composites, shown below, was lit that way. Just remember to match the lighting on the doll to the lighting on the background.


Priestess by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Two posts ago I showed the technique for creating a shadow
when the sun or other light source is well off axis from the
camera. Here is a creative use of that same technique featuring
a shadow that's not really very shadowy.

Me and my Shadow by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Thank you adam for your masterclass tips for achieving the most natural
appearing composites. In my original post to this thread I mentioned that
I wanted it to be a conversation so I assuredly welcome comments such as
yours.

I'd add a clarification and a comment. When you say multiply by the scale
of the doll you're multiplying by the fraction (1/4, 1/3, ...) as you need to be
closer.

Also, the angle of camera is perhaps even more important. If you're relatively
further or closer to the doll it probably won't register but if you're shooting up
at the scene you'd best be shooting up at the doll as well. Camera tilt is more
important than distance.

PS - Love your Flickr gallery!

 

Setting a mood

Since compositing by it's very nature is an editing process it lends itself
to whatever artistic direction you want to take it. In this image I wanted my
fantasy character to be riding through a barren landscape at night.
Barren landscapes are easy. From our visits to Arizona I've collected lots
of barren landscapes. The problem of course is that they're not night
scenes they're bright daytime scenes. Photoshop to the rescue.
I darkened the scene and reduced the saturation to produce the dark
look I was after and gave my mounted figure a fairly extreme curves
adjustment to darken the horse and cloak while leaving the flesh tones
light to focus attention on them. This left the tack too bright so I selected
the reins and halter darkening them further so they didn't detract from
my main subject. When you're not trying to represent reality you can be
much heavier handed with your editing tools.

Night Rider by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Thank you for your contribution!

I don't think this can be said often enough or emphasized enough.

For you composite to be believable you must get the shadows right.
This is one reason I gravitate towards very soft light for my composite
backgrounds.

You also need to get the coloration of your subject right. If your
background is a warm lit sunset you don't want a cool lit subject.

 

A new, to me, 3rd party selection tool.

A few days ago I was reading an online photo editing tutorial and
one of the author's go to tools was a natural media tool by Akvis, a
European software firm. Curious, I looked them up and discovered
that they also have a selection tool that they call AKVIS Smartmask
currently at release 8.0 so it's been around for a while.

Earlier I discussed briefly the two domestic selection tools that I know;
Topaz Labs' ReMask and OnOne Software's Perfect Mask. This tool from
Akvis borrows from both of these with 2 operating modes. The Auto mode
works like ReMask. Draw a keep line inside the object and a discard line
outside the subject. Draw compute this area over places that need more
work. The Manual mode works like Perfect Mask where you select keep
and discard color tones and draw over the transition with a "Magic Brush".
The manual mode also includes a Photoshop like refine edge tool.

This is not a cheap tool! Akvis has a 2 tier pricing structure where the
basic tool is relatively inexpensive but the fully featured tool is more
expensive. The Auto mode only is $69 and the fully featured tool is $90.
A business license is $120. (OK, three tier).

The Photoshop selection tools are really good. More than half of the time
I can get the selections I want without resorting to third party tools.
When I do resort to a third party tool I want one that returns a real mask
that I can edit. The Akvis tool doesn't. While there is a lot about it I like,
not providing an editable mask pretty much disqualifies it for me.
AKVIS does offer a free trial period so if you're a Photoshop filter nerd
you might want to give this one a try.

 

I use curves a lot more than shadows/highlights.

I'll run back through and revisit some of them.

I think that I have the layered files for nearly all of them.

Thank you for your comments.

 

Do you use a RAW workflow? I ask because the Camera Raw Filter; Filters | Camera Raw Filter also includes highlight and shadow sliders as well as Exposure, Black and White so 5 adjustments rather than 2. I'm a whole lot more familiar with this panel than the Highlights/Shadows panel. In comparing the two panels this afternoon I find that while the sliders behave differently between the panels I can pretty much accomplish the same results with either. I'm curious why you chose Highlights/Shadows rather than the Camera Raw Filter. The Camera Raw Filter has the advantage, for me, in that it gives you a visual warning if you any areas that are blown-out.

 

Where might I see some of yoour composites?
Post some here if you wish.

 

I'm pleased that you fly by now and again. Sometimes I do feel like composting some of my photos.

Is that reference to a book, a class, a .....??

 

I have Matt Klozkowski's book on photo compositinig and find it quite instructive.
I just ordered the one you recommended and Hopefully I'll soon have it in hand.
Thank you for the poiinter. It got mostly good reviews on Amazon. Have you
seen any of the Creative Live compositiing courses?

 

For anyone here using Photoshop the new release (2017) has
significantly enhanced the selection tools; especially the refine
edge panel. Look it over. I'll add my take when I've used it a
bit more but my first take is totally enthusiastic.

 

This work is based on the painting "The Kiss" by Francesco Hayez.
The background is all Photoshop, the couple is photographed
selected and composited. The shadow is drawn in by hand. The
selectioin of the couple is done with the Photoshop selection
tools which are improved in release 2017.

The Kiss by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

My kids got a camera for Christmas and Isar glommed onto it
and made it her own. She wants to be a photojournalist. This
is one of her first times out.

This composite combines several techniques I've discussed earlier
in this thread. The background image is from the Women's March
on Washington. I've given it a bit of blur and cropped it a bit. Then
I added a texture layer I used Dissolve blending mode at ~50% opacity.
The selection is with Akvis SmartMask which I'm liking more as I use
it more.

On Location by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

If you're at all into creating fantasy images, as I am,
then you really need to visit Yellowstone National Park.
You'll come away with any number of images that lend
themselves to fantasy themed imagery.

I have a photo directory where I tuck away images that
seem to lend themselves to an as yet undefined project.
One of these was the background image used here. I
thought it would be really cool to place an image between
the foreground trees and the background steam. My
roadblock was that selecting the trees to pull the foreground
seemed daunting.

Enter the Photohop "Select | Color Range" tool. This is not a
tool I was familiar with. It hadn't been mentioned in most
of the books or tutorials. Anyway it was perfect for selecting
the trees and foreground grass. I selected them and then did
a new layer from copy. Then sandwiched my elf girl between
foreground trees and background steam and forest. She's
a bit large and I wasn't pleased with her as a giantess. I was
looking for more of a spirit so a reduced her opacity a bit.

Spirit of the valley by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Here's another fantasy tinged image.
The background image is a long abandoned nunnery on Iona.
I ran it through one of the Topaz "Simplify" presets and then
desaturated it some to drain some of the color out.
The point of the exercise, though, is to talk about fading the
foreground image. This was done with a gradient mask. If
you've never used a gradient mask you really need to fuss
with them a bit. As with all masks, black conceals and white
reveals. In this case I applied a mask that was white from the
top of her head to black at her feet. While linear masks are
the most common you can also create radial masks that will
fade from a center point out iin all directions.
Maybe I'll show one of those next time....

Ghost by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Here is a complete departure for this thread in that this image is not a composite, repeat,
*** Not A Composite ***

Garden - 2 by Tom Beach, on Flickr

It suffers from the same lack of shadows that you get when you're compositing.
My first comment on this photo was that the doll appeared to be "floaty" e.g. not grounded.
Hopefully I'll be able to rescue her from an eternity of floating with some Photoshop tricks.

Stay tuned...

 

Every year I do a Halloween themed composite.
This is the one for this year (2017).

Violet casts a spell by Tom Beach, on Flickr

This is a fairly complex image. There are six layers; from the
background up they are
1 - Graveyard.
2 - House
3 - Spell
4 - Witch
5 - Spell copy
6 - Ghost.

I used Topaz Glow to modify both the graveyard and the house
to give them a properly spooky feel but as they were on different
layers I could treat them differently from one another.

The spell is a background I downloaded from the web. It is green
lines on a black background. As I found it the green was more of a
grass green which didn't work with my witch at all so I changed the
hue to make it work here. The blending mode is "Screen" to drop
the black background out and apply only the green spell. The layer
behind the witch is 100% opaque. The layer in front of her is only
20% opaque and is masked in front of her face. The intent is to make
it seem that she is somewhat enveloped in her spell. The ghost was
not part of the original intent. I added it as an afterthought to make
the composition work better. 80% opaque.

 

This is another less well known utilization of compositing techniques.

Portland Star by Tom Beach, on Flickr

I was about two feet from Star and something over two miles from the
city so no way was there enough depth of field to take this photo. So
I took it once with the city in focus and once with the doll in focus. I layered
the sharp doll over the sharp city and reduced the opacity. Then I aligned
them so the sharp doll was aligned with the soft one underneath. Then it
was straightforward to select the doll, make a new layer by copy and delete
the working layer. Yes there are other ways to do this and yes if you examine
the image critically it isn't perfect. It's plenty good enough for what it is.

Since doll and background are on different layers I could also fix the
exposure variation. The city was much brighter than the overlook we
were at.

 

Advanced selections.

In the Library by Tom Beach, on Flickr

Conceptually this is something I do routinely; select a portion
of the image, select it and copy to a foreground layer so that I
can put my figures between the foreground objects and the
background. The problem here was that none of my automatic
selection tools were capable of differentiating the wood tones
in the chair back from the rest of the warm tones in the background.
Enter the pen tool... I'm not going to try and give a tutorial on the
Photoshop pen tool here. There are several of them online done
by people who are more skilled and better presenters than I.

I used to attack these situations by using the polygonal lasso
tool and while it sort of works with even a little bit of practice
you'll find that the pen tool is actually easier, faster and a whole
lot more accurate. What's not to like.

 

Whenever I give a talk or panel or workshop or... on doll photography
I stress the importance of getting the camera down or the doll up so that
you're shooting straight at, not down at, the doll. Then I created this composite
and realized that there no such a thing as a universal rule. The background
image is of the Stanislaus River in California. I was shooting from well above
the river and I wanted to place my elf girl on that rock outcropping so she'd be
watching over the river. As I've said here more than once, camera tilt is critical
in a composite so if I'm shooting down at the background scene I must shoot
down at my doll from a similar angle as I was shooting down at the river.
The requirement of the composite overshadows the normal rules of photographing
the doll. Actually the shot of the doll viewed out of context is pretty bad, only when
composited into the background scene does it make sense.

Spirit of the River by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

It's been a while since I've posted a new idea here.
That's in part because I've not had new tools or techniques.
This is neither but again a slightly different application of
the conventional techniques.

The requested image was "Inspired by India" now how was I
going to create an image to satisfy that.... Well I have a dusky
skin lady that can certainly pass for Indian. I borrowed a bright
silken scarf from my wife that could pass for a sari. I took a
portrait of the doll, found a suitably Indian background and
composited them together.

- Inspired by India -

Inspired by India by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

At our last meet up I found this boat on our host's prop shelves.
My boy was wearing a black cloak and my girl her Celtic princess
outfit. I posed them in the boat with the intent to make this composite.

The boat was unfinished so the first step was to add a transom to
the rear of the boat.

Then I composited the boat onto a suitably dreary ocean background.

Finally I found a photo of a boat underway and extracted the motion
waves. Then I matched the ocean color and pasted it into this image
to add a sense of movement.

Flight - 2 by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

It may have been bit over the top. I replaced it with the purely photographic version.