Please tear this image apart!

[GMDee]

Hello everyone! I've been working hard at improving both my compositing and my general photoshop skills. This image is one that I would like to have torn apart for the sake of learning and improving my skills. Areas I think I need work on are blending and creating a "realistic" composite. I think I'm doing alright as far as creating atmospheric perspective and other atmospheric effects. Let me know if I'm wrong! Constructive critisism is exactly what I need at this point!

[John Wheeler]

Hi GMDee

That's a pretty cool image.

The two things that stood out to me were both related to the reflections.

1) The height of the water level by how the eye sees it would be (e.g.) where the reflection of the tree trunk comes down and then breaks off at another angle for the reflection part of the trunk. This provides a visual reference for all the other reflections. Anything that I can see reflected on the perceived water surface should have an equivalent real component above it. There seemed to be a mismatch with the fog not reflecting consistent in this fashion and several other points. You should be able to draw a water line on the shore, and see a mirror image. Fog seems offset incorrectly from the mirror point and sometimes I see things in the water reflection that I do not see above the water (I could point out specifics later on if that would help).

2) This second one I cannot explain as well. For some reason with the location of the reflection, it gives me the impression that the water level is higher along the far shore than it is around the woman. I cannot explain why right now, just comes across that way.

Great creative work, my comments are only technical issues that could be solved.

[GMDee]

Thanks for the comments John! I'm having some trouble seeing exactly what you mean in your first comment. Maybe if you could point out some of the specific spots that would help? I've also attached the original image for comparison's sake. I have not touched the reflections at all, except of course for the reflection on the woman, so the entire problem must be in the fog. To be honest, I hadn't even though of having the fog reflect in the surface of the lake, although it is evident now that you point it out that there would indeed be a reflection. Now to figure out exactly how to do that

[Tony W]

Hi GMDee, I really like where you are going with this image so far.

Sometimes it is difficult to offer constructive criticism especially to images you like and in the knowledge that suggestions may be straying too far away from the artists intent.

For me the biggest issue is one of perspective due to the girl being too small for the scene. As there is very little foreground her perceived eye line does not quite fit where I imagine it should relating to the horizon.

Hope you do not mind but I have taken your image and and altered to my liking (wait a few seconds for the image to change) and one I think is more believable.

Another way you might want to look at is keeping the girl the same size and moving her further up into the image (I also added a reflection)

YMMV

[John Wheeler]

HI GMDee

Went away for a while and noticed Tony covered some of this so it will repeat a little.

Thanks for the original. I looked at the image more and there are two items that I am pretty sure fooled my eye.

1) As I indicated the fog reflection not being what my eye expected threw me off. What I did in the attached image below is made out in blue lines the level surface lines from shore to shore. I based this on that your image was perfectly level (reflections matched up on a vertical line) and that the water is flat so horizontal lines would indicate the level surface lines. I am not expert at this yet what I would do is starting from the furthest distance, is when I am adding something (fog or whatever) that should be reflected, then the fog right above one of those horizontal lines would need a mirror image of that fog at equidistant below the horizontal line. Then work forwards so that anything that is added overlays what would have shown up behind it (as it would in reality - very similar to how 3D images are mapped). I think this approach would help get any adding reflections as you need them (of course they would need to be somewhat distorted since the lake probably is not a mirror surface.

2) The second item that I noticed is the size of the woman. I drew a horizontal line where her body enters the water over to the shore. Then the red line goes from her head over to the shore and stops at the same point as the blue line. This indicates how high that portion of her body would be up against the shore. I could be wrong here yet the perspective seems off. The woman's size seems like she should be further away for that size relative to what her size is against the shore bushes. Now I am no expert of size of bushes along waterways so this is just an impression. My gut tells me she would either need to be larger where she is standing or further out in the water. You should probably check this with someone else because this is just my "perspective"

[GMDee]

I think the size issue is being caused by the camera angle and vantage point. I shot the image from a small dock that was about 3 feet above the waterline, with the camera being another 5 feet up. This means that I was shooting downwards, so essentially I am missing the first 10 or 15 feet of lake. Because of that, the trees off to the right hand side of the image are actually far closer to the camera than it appears. In other words, the woman is not at the same visual level as the trees to her right are. Makes things a little tricky! I'm thinking that I should just crop the right hand side of the image in order to get rid of those foreground braches, which should solve the issue. I'll try making the woman a little bigger as well, and see if a combination of both those ideas works. I'll repost when that is done!

[John Wheeler]

Hi GMDee

I think your approach will take care of most of the issues. The bushes/tree on the right really throw it off yet wanted to add another image with vanishing point lines draw (a little difficult to do but took my best guess). Using those vanishing lines I put a copy of the woman quite a ways out. My question is, does she look the right size in that new position relative the shoreline where the blue line goes to the right horizontally from where she enters the water. For the perspective to look right, it needs to be right even for objects (e.g. duplicated woman) for the eye-brain to think that there is nothing odd going on. So increasing the size of the woman or having her a little further out per Tony I think will make a real difference. The non-mirrored fog clouds still get me too. It will be great to see your update.

lake-rework-VP-SFW.jpg

[slowpoke]

I see that I can learn a lot here. I'm new here and plan to learn and have fun also while learning.

[JAYKAT]

I think you have a great photo... Here is my version...

[bottlecaps]

As a serious viewer of images (....), I will say that from a composition standpoint, Tony W had a good idea with "moving her further up into the image..." Something just seemed odd with her position in the image you uploaded, and the balance was much better with the woman further into the frame. I will reference the "rule" of thirds, understanding it can often be ignored.