Composite Image: I need help blending person in

[ylwdog]

I need some help in identifying how better add someone into an image. The boy on camera right was not in the image. Where I am struggling is his feet, so that his feet are touching the ground. He looks like he is floating above the street somewhat and I cannot figure out how to fix this.
Also, if he can be blended into the b/g slightly more...

I would greatly appreciate how to, and a visual example.

Thank you...

doug

[John Wheeler]

Hi Doug

I did not remember if you were using Photoshop or other software.

If you are using PS5 then using the refine mask around the boy on the right and playing with feather controls and position of mask edge may help.

As far as floating, it seems that is often to do with shadows (even subtle ones). I suggest looking the subtle shadows of the boy just next to the one you are inserting and try and duplicate those subtle shadows. Using Burn and Dodge tools can do the trick and so can just adding a layer above, set it to multiply and paint some black where you want the shadow (you can turn down opacity as well). In the sample below I just put in a layer above with a masked black and white gradient and turned down the opacity. It little blurring with the blur tool. This is not a great result yet wanted to give you a direction to think about.

retouchpro-helpC-with-shadow.jpg

[lurch]

Add a grounding shadow under the boy's left foot.

[ylwdog]

@ lurch:
Could you offer an example?

[Siciliana]

Hi Doug,

Lurch and John told you everything you need to make this work out. There was some fringe around the feet, which will interfere. The shadows can be created by pulling down the curves and masking that into the appropriate shadow area, set a feather on your mask to give a realistic edge to the shadow. You can also paint in with black on softlight or overlay mode.

I attached a two second pass on your low-res image... sloppy without a lot of thought, but you get the idea of how to take care of that "floating" phenomenon. Subtle changes make a big difference to the eye. If you really have a hard time thinking about this, take a 3-D drawing class, it can help you to better see how light interacts with objects.

Cheers,
Amy

[Vernon]

Consider warping (assuming you are on Photoshop CS5) the front-most part of the boy's left foot so that it appears flat, like the foot the boy next to him adding the fringe shadow to that will help make it appear more natural...

[Eikon]

Im sure this got solvec long ago but it seems the problem us different camera angle. Tge main plate has more perspective because its lookind down more. The shot if the other kid was probably more zoomed or from a flatter perspective compared to the feet.

When i look at it, i imagine his heel must be digging into the ground in order to be in this position. Since the heel isnt visible, i would erase the dark bottom on the underside of the toe, draw in a contact shadow and that would probably fix the percieved perspective problem. Ideally you could maybe clone in more laces ontop to make it seem like more of the top of the shoe is visible.

[HeavyTheory]

Once you've refined your mask I would only add a layer underneath your subject and build a shadow while experimenting with different blend modes. I find that softlight blending mode usually does the trick as normal may end up too flat. Like John said look at the subtle shadow of the boy he is standing next to. You may be able to hand paint using a similar dark blue or black color. If you are a more advanced user you can select the mask you used to cut out the boy, create a layer underneath him, and fill that selection with black or dark blue. Set the blend mode to Softlight and lower the opacity to a very low value. Using transform on your shadow layer, flip the image vertically. Using warp or Puppet Warp position his feet correspondingly and emulate a shadow similar to his neighbor. Create a blank mask and with your colors set black to white, use the gradient tool and drag it across your shadow to hide the portion closest to you.



www.heavytheory.com

[ylwdog]

Thanks! I will go back and look at that in the image. It is great to have a separate pair of eyes.