How I made this composite ImageWhen I made this image I thought it would be a good learning exercise for others who may already work with layers and would like to follow through my process. There is a pdf available. If you would like me to send you a copy to follow along with or use as a guide, please email me. This is my final image. You ill see it in a club competition soon. I will show you the parts that make up this image and how I manipulated them to achieve this result. My inspiration was an image I saw on the internet of a young woman seated on the ground wrapped in an American flag with the US Constitution in the background. I used part of a face, the Australian flag and the words of Advance Australia Fair to create my version of patriotism. WORKING ON THE PORTRAIT This is my starting image. I shot Therese, my model, in my home studio. I was looking for a serious expression for my final image so I chose this shot. As I already had in my mind that I would use only half of Therese's face, I drew a rectangle selection over the part I would use. I found that her face was tilted. I wanted the nose to be vertical and the line of the eye to be horizontal. I rotated it slightly, then cropped.
Now that I had the face straightened and cropped, I needed to make it high key. I used Silver Efex Pro. I liked the high key result but there was a dark patch in the hair that I needed to lighten. I made a loose feathered selection over the dark patch. I increased the brightness on the dark patch. More lightening was required so I used a curve adjustment. That's the PORTRAIT ready. WORKING ON THE TEXT I created a new document in Photoshop 700px by 936px with a white background. I copied the words of Advance Australia Fair and pasted them into the text box. I selected the font and size. Then I copied the words and pasted them again. The page was almost filled.
That's the TEXT ready. COMPOSITE STAGE 1 I opened the Portrait and added a gradient layer as per the screen shot. I then added a layer mask to the gradient layer. I copied the text and pasted it onto the layer mask. I inverted the layer mask. The result was that the Portrait showed through the text and the text part displayed the colours of the gradient.
COMPOSITE STAGE 2 The text is overlapping the eye so I painted over the eye on the layer mask. I also felt the black background on the right was too heavy so I painted it grey. Here is the result so far.
COMPOSITE IMAGE STAGE 3 The flag is the only element left to be added. I rotated the original flag and painted blue over some of the wrinkles in the flag. I didn't have to be too neat because the flag is a background texture. I copied the flag and pasted it as a new layer onto the composite.
The flag has been added and the blend mode is Overlay at 100% opacity.
But I'm not quite finished because the red of the Union Jack is too bright. I added a layer mask to the flag layer and painted over the red of the Union Jack with grey to mute it.
MY FINISHED IMAGE I added a red pinline, a white border, title and signature. This is the finished image I've uploaded to my gallery.
Composite images are so much more than just images stacked together. To be successful, they require planning and willingness to persevere to achieve your goal. I hope this blog post has been useful and informative. Comments are welcome. Denise
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