Mystical Mountain Photo Composition

Quick reference

• 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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