Composite

[petersweden]

Hi

I am trying to pull of a composite of an athlete and lightning. I want to give the impression that the athlete is lit by the lightning. I am having trouble making this look good.

I have added some low opacity light streaks from the lightning in the direction of the athlete and a color adjustment layer on top of the athlete. Any ideas?

Thanks

Peter

[Repairman]

Take out the warmth from the skin to match the cold blue background. The front of the athlete would be darker but you can creep some light under the armpits to give volume to the torso. Be bold!

[petersweden]

Like this?

[Repairman]

IMO, looks better. I might be tempted to push it further but as I don't know the narrative that may not be appropriate. If detailed musculature is key to the story then you may wish to illuminate the pecs etc by adding localised contrast. Looks like you get some fun jobs!

[Redraw]

What I did, and I am not a photoshop expert, was to capture the model and copy him to another layer above the original. Set that layer to Color Dodge at ~60%. I then adjusted the color using Hue/Saturation to match the lightning. I then copied that layer ,layer still set to Color Dodge and ~60%, and used a Radial Blur set to Zoom, Best, and 100 to give it a bit of glow.

[John Wheeler]

First Peter very nice image.

A couple pieces of input
- The background being mirrored from the center has a certain effect that you may want. The downside is that mirrored images can also pull the eye away from the central object as in "hey, that is mirrored". So depends on what you want.

- I had similar thoughts as Redraw to try out some glow. This was just to try, not that it is better. The start higher contrast of your image has some real power. Putting a Layer Style with outer glow around the man makes it looks like some back-lighting yet not as stark. Just something to try, not necessarily better :

060-as-Smart-Object-1.jpg-v2-SFW.jpg

[GMDee]

I agree with John that the mirrored lightning is a little distracting and takes away from the realism. Maybe find another lightning bolt and use that instead? I'd also maybe reposition the lightning so that it isn't at the exact same distance as the other bolt, just to give the image more realism.

I think the thing that is giving you the most problems is the quality of the light. Lightining bolts would be a source of hard light, and to me the lighting looks too soft. I would think that the bolts would create more specular highlights, sharper shadows and a faster fall-off of light. Short of reshooting the model with a harder light source, I would maybe just increase the constrast of the athlete a little bit, which may help. I've attached a quick edit that demonstrates what I mean. I've also altered the colours a little bit to help the athlete fit into his background.

Love the concept for this shot, it's a really neat idea, you just have to sort out a few lighting and colour issues and it'll be a really great image!