Lecture 108
Assembling Realistic Collages
“Fabricating Scenes in Photoshop"
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Lecture Downloads & Links:
- City Streets
- Landscapes
Lecture 108 Practice:
Introduction:
You will find you often need to assemble elements in an architectural collage/scene. Today we will practice assembling disparate pieces and make lighting conditions “believable” in your final scene.
Part I: Selecting a scene.
- Please select a scene for your collage. The scene can be a natural landscape or an urban scene but should be vacant of primary elements (no/few people).
- Examine the scene. Where is the horizon line? Where are the vanishing points? What type of perspective is the view? (i.e. 1-point or 2-point) What added elements would enhance the composition? How can you make the scene dynamic? Where is the light coming from in the scene?
Part II: Select images to integrate
- Look through your isolated people from last week. Could any of them be added to this new scene? (Pay attention to lighting direction noted in step 2 above)
- If you can’t find appropriate people, look on the course website under Resources>Collage Images. If you still cannot find what you are looking for, look online or create your own.
- Using the techniques discussed & demonstrated in lecture, integrate your person into the scene.
- Place Colored image into the scene using File>Place. Right click on the layer and select “Rasterize Layer.” Transform the image so that the eye line of the people is at the horizon line.
- Place the gray image into the scene using the same method above. Scale the image to match the colored image.
- Use Edit>Transform>Skew to manipulate the shadow so that it matches the shadows in the scene. Be patient as this takes time.
- Change the shadow layer to have a Multiply blending mode. [Review Lecture 105 - Blending Modes]
- If the color is wrong for the shadow, use a Hue and Saturation Adjustment layer (Press Ctrl+Alt+g to apply just to the shadow layer). You will likely need to change the saturation to about 90% and then adjust the Hue to shift the color as necessary.
- With the shadow layer selected, navigate to Filter>Blur and select Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to be 1.0 pixels (or whatever looks right in the scene).
- Repeat and add more elements until your image is well composed and dynamic.
Part III: Repeat
- Select another scene (the opposite of what you chose in step 1) and repeat part 2 to integrate elements into your new scene. The more you practice these techniques now, the easier they will become later.
Part IV: Posting your work.
- Make a new post for Exercise 108 and include the two images you created above. Place your best image as the featured image.
- You should comment on this exercise.
Links: (Sample Scenes, Creative Commons License)
- City Streets
- Landscapes
About the Author:
Grant Adams
Associate Professor of Architecture
Diablo Valley College
www.youtube.com/digitaltoolsforarch | @270Photos | www.lulu.com/spotlight/dtfa | www.vimeo.com/grantadams