#lostnfound

Lost n Found.

Having settled on this concept I have been working on this wee guy all morning and a fair while last night. Photoshop sometimes seems to have a mind of its own as things I tried yesterday without success just seemed to work today.

I am happy with the position and scale of the biker so I added a shadow. I made a copy of the biker and eventually managed to fill it with black. I then changed the shape using transform with a mixture of perspective and distort tools to get the shadow to a believable shape and position. I blended the shadow with the brush tool and a mask then applied Gaussian blur and changed opacity.

I applied a colour balance with a clipping mask to the bike as it stood out as a little too white.

The wheels looked too static so I experimented with motion blur. I made another copy of the bike layer, applied the motion blur then added a mask to keep the majority of him sharp while blurring the wheels. I left a little blur on the rear pannier and the underside as well to add style.

The motion blur had an effect I didn't like on the trailing edge of the tyres so I touched that up with a brush tool.

I added another background layer and applied a mask to that then used a brightness and contrast tool to restore colour and definition to the sky and a little more depth to other areas. It also worked well to reduce some distracting elements.

I tried to add a glow to the headlight as per the video mentioned before but despite following very closely the dialog boxes looked different on opening so I really struggled.

I would be happy to submit this image as it is now but I'd like to try to get that light effect. I know that it will probably be a short fix but trying to work it out on my own is draining. The time vs result equation is not favourable right now.

First draft of Lost and Found.

Today's task was to create a composite image specifically using a pen tool path, a colour correction layer and a clipping mask. The teddy bear task offered did not appeal so I decided to try something for myself and use an image that I had considered for the task but rejected.

The gin bottle was shot on location using entirely natural light and was edited in photoshop to bring out the colours in the bottle and balance the over exposed sky. A quick check of my archive revealed a suitable addition, a photograph taken by me at Ayr at the last airshow of P51 Mustang "Miss Helen". The aircraft had already been edited and was shot on a not too dissimilar day weather wise also with the sun to the left although considerably higher in the sky than on gin day.

I used the pen tool to clip miss Helen from the surrounding sky even though it would probably have blended quite well being predominantly grey cloud. I selected a clipping mask and then added a colour correction layer above. This meant that colour corrections using the clipping mask only applied to the aircraft and not the bottle or background.

I had experimented with each colour channel in turn as I initially thought more yellow would be required with a touch of cyan, that did not sit as well though.

As the task set had several layers of additional bits added I decided to copy the corrected Helen layer and resize it to produce a formation flypast.

A quick check back before the end of the zoom class to make sure I'd got it right met with general approval with the reservation that the aircraft may be lit from the opposite direction. I was fairly sure but not 100% so followed instructions and flipped one horizontally to check.

This actually takes a bit of suspension of logic as well as belief to get my head around. The aircraft and the bottle are actually both lit from the upper left by a diffused sun. The roll of the aircraft and the upright bottle create different angles. Working purely on the assumption that shadows should more or less align to be on the right of the subject with highlights on the left, Heather is correct. I am struggling with the fact that we are both correct and wrong at the same time. What is this witchcraft?

Further footering has led me to a new final image following a suggestion from the much beloved Mrs Walker, that one of them should be inside the bottle.

On a final note one downside of the pen path is that I have removed the blur from the propeller, making it look like it is stopped in mid air, one of my pet hates. It can be a real trick shooting a fast moving subject with a long lens with a slow enough shutter speed to blur the propeller. The holy grail for me is getting a complete disc.

Pen Tool Exercise

I decided to try the pen tool to cut out the Lego bike to try another composite. It turned out reasonably well.

There is a problem with perspective with this particular choice of shots so I did not work it any further to correct light or add shadows. I’m going to reshoot both the bike and the background.