Newbie needs some tips on this image

[beefhitler]

Hello

I am very very new to compositing. I was previously doing some Adobe Illustrator work and I wish to try out some compositing.

I can understand this forum has some of the best in the field and I am posting probably a very awful compositing I am doing here. I apologize for the low quality of this image.

I am midway into the compositing. And I am starting out with matching light and color. I spent about 5 or 10 minutes with the light and color but I want to know the direction I should go with before carrying on.

Can you guys please guide me here where exactly and how do I have to tweak things here? I think the light is off. I am pretty sure the perspective is horrible too. But I would like some starting point as to where should I start from here on. How exactly should I be tweaking things in it?

How would you guys visualize the compositing to finish it from this point on?

Thank you, guys!

PS: Please ignore the landing gears as I have not done anything on them yet. I just copied them from another pic of this helicopter.

[klev]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Relative scale and perspective are off. It's also not clear what you intended. Generally compositing solves a particular problem. You have an image in mind. You need various elements to produce it. Here it looks like you're throwing stuff together. If you're not inspired by it, you might consider something else that does inspire you.

[beefhitler]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Thank you for the advice. Basically I want to have the helicopter being shown taking off from the location and a couple of soldiers standing guard in the background. That is all I am aiming for.

What in the perspective and the scale should I be changing here?

Also, can you please elaborate on the part about solving a problem. I mean... if I have the above aim in mind, what exactly should I concentrate on.

If you had to approach compositing the idea which I am talking about, how would you go about it?

[klev]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Okay. That's a good start, but you need more. What are they doing there? It doesn't appear to be a military installation of any kind. The building is too elaborate. What are they doing? What was the helicopter doing there? If you don't consider this stuff, it's going to be boring and uninspired. I speak from experience on that.


When you get some of that down, you should start looking at more images to try to establish relative scale. The size of the helicopter vs the landing pad is one thing. You will want to determine the proximity of those people and the building. You do this stuff before you start with the fake fog and all of the blending and other detail. You should not jump ahead like this, because you now need to rewind it anyway.

After you have the narrative polished and everything to scale, you make sure the perspectives fit. Then you need to be concerned with lighting. Right now nothing matches in that regard. Some of the stuff you're doing here should come after all of that.

[skoobey]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

You can't just say it's off. It's going somewhere. People are too small and wide compared to the helicopter, building is too close to be that small, H sign is too small, and helicopter is throwing no shade. And the wheels need to be round, not cut off at the bottom.

Overall perspective is good, overall tones are pretty consistent. I like that you made the blades spin, but the rear rotor needs to spin as well.

As for the narrative, if this were a night scene with a lot of dramatic lights, or there were a lot of debris, damage to the building and soldiers were running away from the helicopter you would have a sense of urgency and action.

I need to find a gig with a creative agency I love doing this sort of stuff.

[Tony W]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Perspective and scale are out.

When you are doing this sort of thing you may find it advantageous to remember that the horizon will always be at the observers eye level (in this case camera = observer). This rule applies regardless of the observers height or standing, lying down or suspended by a crane. Also if you have clues in the image roads etc you can also locate the vanishing point.

Attached shows very quick example horizon approx position in each case you will need to study images and take more time to get a truer horizon - needless to say (but I will!) I have not made any effort in masking and blending.

1. Align the horizon lines in all images as shown on right

2. Helicopter is at ground level you need to be careful how high you are imitating as you cannot see anything under.

3. Soldiers you may want to raise the horizon line to the soldier right eye level, but in any case you will probably need to extend the foreground to balance composition.

[beefhitler]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

You can't just say it's off. It's going somewhere. People are too small and wide compared to the helicopter, building is too close to be that small, H sign is too small, and helicopter is throwing no shade. And the wheels need to be round, not cut off at the bottom.

Overall perspective is good, overall tones are pretty consistent. I like that you made the blades spin, but the rear rotor needs to spin as well.

As for the narrative, if this were a night scene with a lot of dramatic lights, or there were a lot of debris, damage to the building and soldiers were running away from the helicopter you would have a sense of urgency and action.

I need to find a gig with a creative agency I love doing this sort of stuff.

Here's what I am going to do:

People are too small and wide compared to the helicopter,
Would scale them accordingly

building is too close to be that small,
Yup, I did not notice that initially but now that you have mentioned it I feel uneasy about my whole idea haha. Probably have to scale down the Helicopter.

H sign is too small,
Again, gonna scale it at the end after scaling the others.

and helicopter is throwing no shade.
I actually thought the shade won't be visible within the camera frame. But will definitely play with the shadows a bit.

And the wheels need to be round, not cut off at the bottom.
Agreed. I have not worked on them yet. Just copy pasted them from another pic. I will do it.

[beefhitler]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Perspective and scale are out.

When you are doing this sort of thing you may find it advantageous to remember that the horizon will always be at the observers eye level (in this case camera = observer). This rule applies regardless of the observers height or standing, lying down or suspended by a crane. Also if you have clues in the image roads etc you can also locate the vanishing point.

Attached shows very quick example horizon approx position in each case you will need to study images and take more time to get a truer horizon - needless to say (but I will!) I have not made any effort in masking and blending.

1. Align the horizon lines in all images as shown on right

2. Helicopter is at ground level you need to be careful how high you are imitating as you cannot see anything under.

3. Soldiers you may want to raise the horizon line to the soldier right eye level, but in any case you will probably need to extend the foreground to balance composition.

Thank you, Tony.

Just a quick question. should I align the Helicopter like you said and then just raise it upwards? I have seen helicopters with their nose up right after take off or right before landing. If I have to achieve that, how would you raise the Helicopter up to maintain the horizon?

[beefhitler]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

What I have gathered from the advice till now is that I need to work on the background first and then go ahead with anything in the foreground. Plus, color work and fog effects etc come in the end. Perspective and scaling are the most important thing in compositing.

[klev]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

What I have gathered from the advice till now is that I need to work on the background first and then go ahead with anything in the foreground. Plus, color work and fog effects etc come in the end. Perspective and scaling are the most important thing in compositing.

Definitely. Without establishing that for each component as you place it, you're creating additional problems for yourself later on. These two things are core fundamentals.

[Tony W]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Thank you, Tony.

Just a quick question. should I align the Helicopter like you said and then just raise it upwards? I have seen helicopters with their nose up right after take off or right before landing. If I have to achieve that, how would you raise the Helicopter up to maintain the horizon?

You can raise the helicopter above the horizon line but the more you do the more you would expect to see the underside.

The issue with the helicopter as I see it is this:

First the real horizon line may be above i.e. just under the aircraft in the background left. Although I think this likely I wanted to suggest a lower viewpoint by moving horizon down

In either case it means the shot is taken above the eye height of a pretty tall man - although I do not have any yardstick to judge the height or a man right next to the helicopter so I imagined that a head would be no higher than my horizon line - in real life it may be considerably lower.

The bottom line is that the camera is effectively looking down on the helicopter as you cannot see the underbelly as you can in This Image

For realism with the helicopter taking off you would expect to see the belly of the fuselage and the undercarriage mechanism.

However you might get away with it if you were to angle the helicopter nose down a little so the viewer perceives movement. Again some care needed to not go too far as you would need to be seeing the top of the aircraft example

[beefhitler]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Is there any improvement in this?

http://i.imgur.com/utciRb4.jpg

I changed some scale and perspective.

[klev]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Scaling and stuff is more realistic. It's still not interesting, and it's not clear where you're trying to go with it. This is still a reasonable way to practice.

[beefhitler]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

Scaling and stuff is more realistic. It's still not interesting, and it's not clear where you're trying to go with it. This is still a reasonable way to practice.

Thank you, Klev.

All in all, this thread was a great learning resource for me.

I should mention that this is entirely for practicing perspective, scale, light and color blending. This is the first image I have worked on. The advice from you guys is duly noted and my next aim would be to create something which has a goal and not just randomly put images together.

During the practice and subsequent research on the topic it seems like I am tremendously attracted to photo manipulation. Earlier my friends would give me their pictures to touch up or, as they say, "make it look amazing", and that was getting very boring. Photo manipulation looks challenging to me and I want to get into it more.

I have seen some Youtube stuff which has speed art manipulations etc. But I am pretty sure there are other videos related to the topic which aren't really visible in the searches. I already know Behance and DeviantArt. Although they are more of a showcase/portfolio display kind of a thing, I still managed to find some before/after or steps kind of stuff there.

Can you guys please recommend me some sites or forums where they discuss Photo Compositing or post speed art stuff? The ones I got are more inclined towards 3D, InDesign and VFX. I did find some Photoshop only stuff in them but there oughta be more out there. Basically I need some inspiration and it would be great if that comes with tips or advice or whatever we call it.

This forum is my favorite and I will keep coming back to it. Taught me a lot of Photoshop stuff although I was initially into basic Illustrator stuff.

[Wolly55]

Re: Newbie needs some tips on this image

You could have a look at .

www.phlearn.com and www.youtube.com/GlynDewis

Just a couple i've used in the past, then once you are on youtube you can always look at the others that you see. These are not speed art, but some good tutorials on them for photoshop.