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About this lesson
Compositing, or merging one image into another so that they are seamless, is one of the key skills in Photoshop and this extensive tutorial shows you how to do this with a number of different images, like night and daytime images, and a moon.
Exercise files
Download the Photoshop file used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Mystical Mountain Photo Composition.psd65.6 MB
Quick reference
Topic
Give a dull shot a mountain range a mystical appearance.
When to use
Compositing, or merging one image into another so that they are seamless, is one of the key skills in Photoshop and this extensive tutorial shows you how to do this with a number of different images, like night and daytime images, and a moon.
Instructions
Mask out the sky from the first image
- Use the quick selection tool from the tools bar
- Brush over the sky
- To add to the selection brush over on the other areas that you want to include
- To deselect area’s hold down the Option or ALT key
- To invert the selection go to the select menu and inverse (shortcut: Command or Control Shift and 'I’)
- To refine the selection go to menu: select: refine edge: increase the radius value
Add left and right sky replacements images
- Drag the new images in and place them under the mountain range
- Add layer masks to the new images
- With the gradient tool (shortcut D) select a ‘transparent to black’ gradient
- With the layer mask selected paint in the transitions you want.
Match the mountains to the new sky colors with photo filters
- Add a photo filter adjustment layer
- Clip the adjustment layer to the mountains
- Change the filter setting to suit the new sky on one side
- With the layer adjustment layer mask selected use the gradient tool (shortcut G) to paint out the opposite side of the range.
- Repeat process for other side of sky.
Add curves adjustment layer to match and brighten up image
- Add curves adjustment layer
- Do not clip it
- Adjust to suit
Add and blend in the moon image
- Drag in moon
- Enter free transform (Command or Control T) to reposition and resize.
- Bring up blending options in layer styles:
- In the blend if section, hold Option or ALT and drag left slider to the right.
- Add a layer mask and use the gradient tool (shortcut G) to paint out the edges of the moon image.
- 00:04 Hey everybody, Howard Pinsky here with a brand new Photoshop tutorial, and we're
- 00:08 going to be doing a little bit
- 00:09 of photo composition in today's tutorial. I'm taking this
- 00:13 image right here, which I shot a few days gone Colorado, and we are going
- 00:17 to be transforming it into a mystical mountain range.
- 00:17 When I initially shot the photo, it looked great
- 00:21 on my camera,
- 00:22 but when I took it into Lightroom and I did some toning, it just didn't give me
- 00:25 that affect that I was looking for.
- 00:27 So I figure, instead of throwing this image in the trash, I'm going to grab some photos
- 00:30 from Shutterstock.com
- 00:32 and I'm going to take this image to a whole other level. I ended up with something
- 00:35 that looks like this.
- 00:36 So, let's go ahead and begin. Before I even touch the stock images,
- 00:41 I want to make sure to isolate the sky from the rest of the image.
- 00:44 That'll allow me to easily grab those stock images of the different skies
- 00:48 and put them right behind the mountain range of this image. To do that,
- 00:52 Photoshop has a lot of different selection methods that we can use,
- 00:54 but I'll use the quick selection tool, which can be found in your tools bar,
- 00:58 because I found that for situations like this, it works fantastic.
- 01:01 It works almost like a brush - we can actually brush over the areas of your
- 01:04 image that you want to turn into a selection.
- 01:06 So, with my right square bracket key, I can increase the size of my brush
- 01:10 and simply start brushing over top of the sky and clouds, just like this.
- 01:14 You'll notice we now have the marching ants going across our image,
- 01:18 and that indicates that area will become a selection.
- 01:21 Now you might notice, if I zoom in to this area here, some of the mountains were selected
- 01:26 as well.
- 01:26 So, I can easily decrease the size the brush with my left square bracket key
- 01:30 and then hold down my Option key on the Mac or ALT key in Windows
- 01:33 and brush in that area to deselect that area.
- 01:37 And with my spacebar held down, I can pan across the image to see if there are any other
- 01:40 areas that need to be deselected.
- 01:41 So, right over here, there's a little bit of the mountains
- 01:45 that were selected: so I can simply hold down the Option key
- 01:47 and click, and that area will become deselected. I'll pan over to the left
- 01:51 over here,
- 01:52 and the rest the mountains are looking pretty nice. There is one more little
- 01:55 area that was selected over here, so I can hold down my Option key one more time and
- 01:58 simply click to deselect.
- 02:00 If I press Command or Control ‘0’, I can see the whole image on my screen.
- 02:04 Now, at this point we have the sky selected, but we actually want the
- 02:07 mountain selected, so we can get rid the sky.
- 02:08 It was just easier to select the sky, rather than
- 02:12 everything else below it.
- 02:13 To invert the selection, we can go up to the Select menu
- 02:16 and ‘inverse’, or alternatively, use the shortcut Command or Control Shift and 'I'.
- 02:20 Now, once that's done, because we're dealing with
- 02:23 trees and a little bit of rock, we want to refine the edge of our selection.
- 02:26 This will give us a much more defined and
- 02:29 accurate selection than we have right now. It's a little bit sharp and jagged.
- 02:33 So right up here, we have the Refine Edge feature, which can also be found
- 02:37 under the select menu as well.
- 02:38 I have done a few tutorials in the past on this feature, so I'm not going to go
- 02:42 over all the options.
- 02:43 Basically, right here you have a few different ways on how you can view your
- 02:46 result. You can view it as marching ants - what's basically a selection,
- 02:49 overlay - on black, on white, black and white and so on.
- 02:53 I'll go for the black and white option, as it’s going to allow me to see exactly how my
- 02:56 selection are turning out.
- 02:58 And once you have your view set, all we really want to do is turn on ‘smart
- 03:01 radius’
- 03:02 and increase the radius value. And you're going to see if I zoom in over here,
- 03:06 we have a much more accurate selection. Photoshop has actually gone in between the
- 03:10 trees to make a more accurate and refined selection.
- 03:11 So, if you're dealing with a subject that
- 03:14 contains fur,
- 03:15 or hair, or trees, you definitely want to use the smart radius feature,
- 03:19 as the selection will be much more accurate. And when we go ahead and add the
- 03:23 stock images behind the mountains,
- 03:25 it's almost going to be seamless. So with that said, the only other option that we
- 03:29 want to set
- 03:30 is the output. I'll select the layer mask, which allows us to hide that sky in the
- 03:35 background,
- 03:35 but won’t delete it completely. It's always going to be there for you if you
- 03:38 need itlater on.
- 03:39 And when I press OK, Photoshop is going to hide the sky,
- 03:42 leaving us with only the mountains. One more time, Command 0 or Control 0 to fit
- 03:46 the image on my screen.
- 03:48 And if I hop over here to my Layers panel, you can see we have that same image,
- 03:52 but we now have a layer mask on it which is hidden in the sky.
- 03:55 If I hold down Shift and click on that layer mask, you can see that the sky
- 03:58 is still actually there but it's hidden using that mask.
- 04:00 So at this point, we can now go ahead and add
- 04:04 those stock images into this image.
- 04:05 So, I'll go over here to this image here:
- 04:08 this sky is going to be on the left side of my image. So I'll grab the move tool
- 04:12 and simply drag it on top of this document, and place it right here.
- 04:16 Now, initially it's going to be on top of the mountains, but in the Layers panel
- 04:19 you can simply drag
- 04:20 it right below and place it behind the mountains. And of course, you can grab the
- 04:24 move tool again
- 04:25 and position it anywhere you like. I'll position it right over there.
- 04:28 Next, let's go to our next document image of a night sky,
- 04:32 again: drag on top of this document and place it
- 04:35 right there, and with my move tool, I am moving it anywhere I like.
- 04:38 Now, here's something you should take note of. Because we're going to be blending these
- 04:41 two skies together,
- 04:43 we want the top sky - which in this case is that night sky on the right -
- 04:47 we don't want to place it too far to the right, because the blending won't look
- 04:50 that nice and won’t occur right in the middle, so we want to actually place it a little bit to
- 04:53 the left:
- 04:54 just right around here. This will give us a little bit of room to blend it with
- 04:57 the image in the back,
- 04:58 and give us a nice transition in the middle of our image.
- 05:01 And once you have both skies in place, you want to add a layer mask to this
- 05:05 image, so we can go ahead and blend them really nicely. So at the bottom of the layers
- 05:09 panel, we're going to click on the layer mask icon right here.
- 05:12 It’s going to add a blank layer mask, as you can see, to the right of this layer.
- 05:15 Now to blend it, we're going to be using the gradient tool, which can be found in
- 05:19 your tools bar on the left,
- 05:20 right over here. And with that selected, you want to make sure
- 05:23 that the second gradient option is selected, which is foreground to transparent.
- 05:27 And you want to make sure your foreground color is set to black - because if you know
- 05:31 anything about layer masks, you know
- 05:33 that black hides a portion of your layer and white reveals it.
- 05:37 And when that id set, all you have to do is go to the left side of the top
- 05:40 image, which is our night sky, hold in your Shift key to constrain that
- 05:44 gradient,
- 05:44 and drag it to the right. You don't want to go too far, but somewhere right around
- 05:48 here.
- 05:48 When you let go, you will now have a nice transition between the left sky
- 05:52 and the night sky, and of course, if you're not happy with it, Command or Control
- 05:56 ’Z’ to undo.
- 05:57 And you can redo it. So in this case, I'll hold down Shift and drag a
- 06:01 little bit further to the right to get a little bit more of a transition.
- 06:04 And that looks good right there. So, at this point we have the skies in place.
- 06:08 We have the left sky, which is little bit of a dusk sunset type sky,
- 06:10 and then the right sky, which is more of a night time look.
- 06:15 But obviously, there's a little bit of a problem. If you take a look at the
- 06:17 mountains in the foreground,
- 06:19 they don't really match the sky in the background, so we need to fix that.
- 06:23 And to do that, we're going to add a few adjustment layers on top of the
- 06:26 mountains.
- 06:27 So, in the Layers panel, you want to make sure to have the top layer selected,
- 06:30 which in this case
- 06:31 is our mountains, and right at the bottom we're going to add an adjustment layer.
- 06:35 The first one I'll be adding is Photo Filter: this will allow it to warm up and
- 06:39 cool down our layers,
- 06:41 but when you first add an adjustment layer, it adds it to all of your layers.
- 06:45 What we need to do is clip it to the mountain there, so it only affects the
- 06:48 mountains and the grass in the foreground.
- 06:51 And that can be done in the Properties panel, using this icon right here, which will
- 06:54 clip it to the layer right below it.
- 06:55 So that way it's not going to affect the skies
- 06:59 that we have in the background.
- 07:00 You can see in your layers panel, you have a little down arrow indicating
- 07:03 that this adjustment layer is clipped to the layer right below it.
- 07:07 Now, as for the adjustment itself, we do want a warming filter because we are going to
- 07:10 be working on the left side of the image first,
- 07:11 and then we can move to the right side.
- 07:14 And Photoshop does have a few types of warming filters, so go through and see
- 07:17 which one works best.
- 07:18 But really, you want to increase the density until the mountains become nice
- 07:22 and orange. Just like this. If you go down to the bottom of our Layers panel and
- 07:26 highlight it, you can see the different it's made.
- 07:28 So there's the before, and there's the after. We now have much warmer mountains.
- 07:33 Now they do seem a little bit washed out right now, but we're going to take care of that in
- 07:36 the end when we add a final curves adjustment, so don't worry about that too
- 07:40 much.
- 07:40 We're just worrying about warming it up on the left side, and then cooling it
- 07:44 down on the right side.
- 07:45 But even though we went ahead and clipped this adjustment layer to the
- 07:48 mountains below it,
- 07:50 the right side is image, which is supposed to be cool, is now warm.
- 07:53 So how do we deal with that? Well, adjustment layers come with a layer mask.
- 07:58 If you take a look beside the adjustment layer on the right, you have a blank
- 08:01 layer mask.
- 08:02 So just like we were able to blend the two skies together,
- 08:05 we can use a black gradient to blend out the adjustment layer.
- 08:08 So I still have the gradient tool selected,
- 08:11 and with the layer mask on the adjustment active, I can go to my document,
- 08:15 hold down Shift, and drag from the right side of the image to the left.
- 08:19 And you'll notice it’s got rid of the adjustment on the right side of the image,
- 08:23 only leaving the warming filter on the left site. So again, if I turn off the
- 08:27 filter,
- 08:28 and then back on, you can see that photo filter is only affecting the left sided
- 08:32 image - which is exactly what I want.
- 08:34 So now that adjustment is done, we'll add another photo filter
- 08:37 to affect the right side of the image. So again, I'm going to bring up my adjustment
- 08:41 layers
- 08:41 and I can add another photo filter. But this time, I want to change it from a warming
- 08:45 filter
- 08:46 to a cooling filter, and then increase the density until it looks nice
- 08:50 on the right side of the image: somewhere right around there.
- 08:53 Now obviously, just like we did in the last step, we don't want this filter
- 08:57 affecting the left side of the image,
- 08:59 so with the gradient tool still active and the layer mask active,
- 09:03 I'll simply drag a gradient from around the middle of the document
- 09:06 to the right. It'll get rid of that cooling filter on the left side,
- 09:10 leaving it nice and cool on the right. And of course, just like with the
- 09:13 previous adjustment layers that we added,
- 09:15 you want to make sure to clip it to the previous layer so it’s not affecting
- 09:19 the sky in the background.
- 09:21 Good, so at this point we now have the new skies in the background
- 09:24 blended nicely together. We have a sunrise on the left and night sky on the
- 09:28 right.
- 09:28 And on the mountains we have a nice warming filter on the left and a nice
- 09:32 cooling filter on the right.
- 09:33 But like I mentioned, the foreground's a little bit washed out.
- 09:36 So one thing I love to do when you come to the end of a project,
- 09:40 is add a curves adjustment layer, just to sharpen up the image and fill in
- 09:43 some other tones that may be washed out.
- 09:45 So one more time, I'll grab the adjustment layer - I'm going to grab the curves
- 09:48 adjustment layer.
- 09:49 I'll simply make some adjustments and bring down some of the shadows just like
- 09:53 this,
- 09:53 bring up the highlights just a little bit, just to sharpen up that image to
- 09:56 give it more of a contrast,
- 09:58 and bring the shadows down just a little bit more. And you can see, we no longer
- 10:01 have that washed out look.
- 10:03 And with this adjustment, you may or may not want to clip it. If I go ahead
- 10:07 and clip it just to the mountains,
- 10:08 the skies a little bit washed out, it doesn't really match. So I'll actually
- 10:12 unclip it, which gives us a nice high contrast effect.
- 10:16 So looking back at what we've done so far, we started out by removing the sky
- 10:19 using
- 10:20 selection and refine edge. Then we added those stock images from Shutterstock
- 10:24 behind the mountains. We blended them really nicely together using a layer
- 10:28 mask.
- 10:28 And then we added a few adjustments to add a nice warming effect on the left
- 10:31 side
- 10:32 and a cooling effect on the right side, so that they match the sky in the
- 10:36 background.
- 10:36 And then we finished it off using curves adjustment layer, to sharpen up the image
- 10:40 and give it a nice high contrast affect.
- 10:43 And with the same techniques, you can bring in additional images, like this
- 10:46 moon over here. I can grab this image here,
- 10:48 and with my move tool, drag it over to this document, and I can add a nice moon into
- 10:52 this image.
- 10:53 Obviously it’s a little bit too big. So, enter free transformer - Command or Control ‘T’.
- 10:58 Command or Control ‘0’ so I can see the whole document, including the transform
- 11:02 bounds.
- 11:02 I'm going to drag downwards just a little bit, like this,
- 11:06 press Return or Enter to accept, and I'm going to drag it in my Layers panel,
- 11:09 right below the mountains. So, I'll position it where I like:
- 11:13 in the top right corner right around here.
- 11:14 Now, obviously if I fit the image to the screen,
- 11:18 you can see
- 11:19 that we now have an ugly border around the image above the moon.
- 11:22 So how do we fix that? Well there are few things you can do, including using a layer mask
- 11:26 and the selections
- 11:26 button to start with. One of my favorite little known features is a feature that a lot
- 11:30 of people don't use in Photoshop, which is Blend If.
- 11:32 If I double click on the layer to bring up layer styles,
- 11:36 and down here at the bottom we have the Blend If section.
- 11:39 And in this case, you really want to suck out some other shadows of the layer,
- 11:42 so down here we have this slider right here. If I hold on my Option on the Mac,
- 11:46 ALT key in Windows, I can drag the right sided slider to the right,
- 11:50 to transition some of the shadows out of this layer. You are still going to have a little bit
- 11:54 of a border,
- 11:55 but if I press OK, we can easily deal with that using a layer mask
- 11:58 So one more time, just as we've done with all the other layers,
- 12:03 I'll add a layer mask and with my gradient tool, I'll press the G key on the keyboard
- 12:07 and simply add a very slight gradient from the left side of the layer,
- 12:11 just around here to transition that out, and from the bottom up.
- 12:15 This will leave us with a nice, seamless moon in the background
- 12:18 of our image.
- 12:19 And of course, if you need, all these layers are completely editable, which is a
- 12:22 huge advantage of using adjustment layers. So if you go back later on and decide
- 12:26 you want a little bit more contrast in the image, you can simply click on the
- 12:29 curves adjustment layer
- 12:30 and make changes as needed, just like that. And it's not just the adjustment
- 12:35 layers, it's also the masks as well.
- 12:37 So if you take a look at your image and notice that the mountains are a little bit
- 12:40 rough around the edges and you want to bring that mask inwards a bit,
- 12:43 you can simply click on the layer mask in the Properties panel.
- 12:46 You can see the mask properties, and you can actually go ahead and click on mask
- 12:50 edge to bring up that dialogue box again,
- 12:53 and make changes as needed. So you can go ahead and shift that edge
- 12:56 inward a little bit, and you notice that some the sky was left over
- 12:59 on the mountains. And once you press OK, it'll apply that change directly to the layer mask.
- 13:03 And that just about completes it. Using a few stock images,
- 13:07 a few adjustment layers, and some masking, we have taken a pretty mediocre image and
- 13:11 completely transformed it
- 13:13 into a mystical mountain range.
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