Continued from the previous page
Next, I've got to generate the shadow cast by his leg so that it comes close to matching the shadow cast by the girl. Most would say just generate a layer drop-shadow using Photoshop's layer effects. But that's incorrect. I've got to carefully generate a shadow for just the parts of the boy which affect the stone facia of the sign.
To demonstrate this, I've created a more simplified exercise so you can understand the principle without the intricacies of the image. If you don't know the best way to create a shadow, then take this little side tutorial on making drop shadows.
Once the shadow is created, I can simply blend it into the stone, matching it up with the girl's shadow, by adjusting the Opacity. Here, I crank it down to about 37%, which seems right. Now, the scene looks convincing.
Next step is matching his color and exposure to hers. This is easily accomplished with a new adjustment layer.
First I make a selection of the boy by Cmd/clicking the layer thumbnail in the layers palette. (Ctrl/click on PC) Then I choose ...
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels
This generates a new adjustment layer, complete with a layer mask.
In the resulting Levels histogram dialog, I adjust the middle slider until the exposure and value of the boy is as close to the girl as I can get.
Next I generate another Levels adjustment layer (as before) except this time with no selection. With this Levels dialog, I'll adjust the whole image up to a brighter, lighter finished work. Now it looks good, and is convincing.
I save this virsion before converting to grayscale and doing the final scaling for the black and white newsletter.
And, that's all there is to it! In the finished newsletter, nobody noticed, although the director and several others admitted they didn't remember seeing this photo when putting together the materials to send to me. (grin.)
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from the Editor:
I was delighted that day back in 1989 when Peggy Killburn called to ask if I could handle one more speaker in my "Great Graphics Tips & Tricks" session scheduled for the 1990 Macworld Expo. "Yes" was my response to her request to add Russell Brown to my panel. After all, we loved Adobe's young "Illustrator" program, and were quite anxious to try out their upcoming new product called "Photoshop." After seeing his demo, I was convinced Photoshop would be big. So the next month we added "Photoshop Tips & Tricks" to our regular DTG Magazine uploads to Compuserve, GEnie and AOL. The rest is history.
I only regret that I didn't trademark the name.
Editor / Publisher: Photoshop Tips & Tricks, DTG Magazine.