Learn how to create a composite image in Photoshop by adding various elements into a scene. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to add a crane and a hiker into a London scene, modify their sizes, and adjust their positions to create a more realistic look.
Key Insights
- The article illustrates how to open multiple files in Photoshop, select particular elements from each file, and combine them into a single composite image. Techniques such as copying and pasting layers, linking layers, and transforming images are highlighted.
- Adjustments are made to the sizes and positions of the added elements to ensure they fit naturally into the scene. The crane and hiker are resized and repositioned numerous times, achieving an appropriate scale and placement in relation to other components in the image.
- Additional Photoshop tools like the clone stamp tool, the magic wand tool, and the polygonal lasso tool are used for more detailed modifications. These tools are employed to extend the crane's height, remove the background from the crane image, and create the illusion of the crane being behind the building.
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In this video, we’ll be adding our Hiker Removed and crane into our London scene.
Let’s begin by opening each of these files. We’ll go to File, Open, and first select Crane Removed, then hold CTRL to select London Banner 3 and Hiker on Path Adjusted.
With all of these highlighted, we’ll click Open, and at the top of Photoshop, we’ll see that all three of our files are open.
With London Banner 3 opened, we’re now ready to begin adding the other elements to our image to create a composite.
Let’s begin by adding the Crane Removed Photoshop file. We’ll go to Crane Removed. We’ll select the Phase 10 Construction logo, and holding CTRL, we’ll select Crane Removed Branded.
We’ll then hit CTRL C to copy the layers, and going back to the London Banner 3 Photoshop file, we’ll hit CTRL V to paste.
As we can see, the image is skewed to the right and obviously too large.
However, in this case, we have both the logo on the top panel and the Crane Removed Branded layer, so let’s link these two together to prevent them from separating as we begin transforming and resizing our image.
To do this, with both layers highlighted, we’ll right-click and select Link Layers.
Now, we can hit CTRL T to transform our image, and we’re simply going to drag in on the side to reduce the size.
We’ll then move it to the top right-hand side and adjust the size further in the future.
We can hit ENTER to commit this transformation, and next, let’s begin by adding our hiker.
We’ll go to Hiker on Path Adjusted. We’ll select the Hiker Removed layer, and with it selected, we’ll hit CTRL C to copy it.
Then, going back to London Banner 3, we’ll hit CTRL V, and we now have our Hiker Removed layer.
Let’s transform it by hitting CTRL T, and we’ll zoom out using CTRL MINUS (-) (-). We’ll simply shrink the size of our layer until our hiker is right in the middle at an appropriate size.
We’ll hit ENTER, and we’ll make more modifications to his size in the future.
Let’s now use CTRL S to save our work.
Next, we’ll adjust the size of our crane in the top right-hand corner.
So, with the Crane Removed Branded image selected, we’ll zoom in and scroll to the top, then hit CTRL T to transform our image.
We’ll then resize it to the right, shrinking it a little, with the goal that the right-hand side fits right inside this nook, and the left-hand tower comes right up from this edge of the building.
So, I’ll move it down a little with the arrows and hit ENTER, and our image is now in a good place.
However, the tower doesn’t quite reach the top of the buildings, so we can make adjustments to this.
We’ll zoom in, scroll to the right, and zoom in a little further.
Next, we’ll use our Clone Stamp Tool in the toolbar. With the Clone Stamp Tool selected, let’s go to our options bar and change the size to about 30 pixels.
Next, we’ll select a point from which our new pixels will come. Holding ALT, let’s select the next joint in our tower.
We’ll click here, and then, making sure the layer thumbnail is selected on the left-hand side, we’ll line up our image and simply click and drag.
We’ll make sure we go right below the top of the building and add all of the image below.
Next, we need to remove the background from our image.
To do so, we’ll first select the mask of our image, and then we’ll use the Magic Wand Tool from the left-hand side of the toolbar to begin selecting the background.
Changing our tolerance to 20, we’ll click right in the middle, and making sure that Contiguous is not checked, we’ll select all of the background.
However, looking at this, we’ve selected a lot of the bottom of our image.
Instead, we simply want to remove the background from the bottom of our image, so let’s use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to make sure we’re only selecting this part of our image.
To do this, we’ll use the Intersect with Selection option in our options bar. Now, if we draw a polygon around this bottom section that we want to work with and close it off, we’ll see that only the intersection of the polygon we drew and the selection we previously had will be selected.
We can now right-click, select Fill, and with the contents set to Black, we’ll select OK.
We’ve now removed the background from our image.
Looking on the right-hand side, we have a little bit of the original background crane, so we can fix this with the Paintbrush.
We’ll select this from the toolbar, hit CTRL D, and currently, our Paintbrush tip is too large, so we’ll right-click, reduce the size, and simply begin coloring over it with Black as our foreground color.
Next, we’re ready to remove the bottom of our crane along the edge.
To do this, we’ll select the entire Crane Removed Branded layer and change the opacity from 100 to 50 by double-clicking it and hitting ENTER.
This will give us the opportunity to see the background through our crane image.
Next, we’ll go to the Polygonal Lasso Tool and select the bottom part of our crane image to remove it from our mask.
We’ll select the mask on the right-hand side of our Crane Removed Branded layer, and we’ll simply begin creating a polygon across the top of the roof where we don’t need to see the crane, since ultimately, the crane is supposed to be behind our roof.
We’ll close it off, right-click, select Fill, and hit OK.
We’ve now removed it so the crane looks like it’s behind the building. We’ll hit CTRL D, and now, with Crane Removed Branded selected, we’ll change the opacity back to 100 and hit ENTER.
If we zoom out, we can see that the crane now looks like it’s coming from behind the building.
Let’s save our work using CTRL S, and in the next video, we’ll clear up some of these lines and add a shadow to our hiker.
See you then!