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RAB's Tip Pad

~ Photographing History, Aviation and People

RAB's Tip Pad

Tag Archives: post

Aviation Composite Portrait Methodology

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Post, Shooting

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

airplane, aviation, Color Efex Pro, composite, HDR, HDR Efex Pro, Nik, Nik Software, photo, photography, Photoshop, plane, portrait, post, Post processing, RC

USA, Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park, Composite portrait of man with his RC plane. MR (Rick A. Brown/www.moosephoto.com)

With all the cool stuff I’ve recently posted to my web page, I had a hard decision deciding what to blog about today. Eventually, I decided to describe how I made this aviation themed composite portrait. You may remember, I wrote about this idea here, when it first popped into my head.

After reading and learning the techniques taught in Matt Klaskowski’s,  Photoshop Compositing Secrets: Unlocking the Key to Perfect Solutions & Amazing Photoshop Effects for Totally Realistic Composites and acquiring my studio lighting, I thought that a composite portrait of a pilot with his plane flying over his shoulder would be something fantastic I could offer my clients. So I immediately set upon creating an example piece.

I started with the portrait of my Dad, the RC pilot. This was actually the first serious project I undertook with my lighting kit. I went with a gridded strobe behind and to one side and a bare speedlight on the other side (I currently only have two studio heads.) I then placed a beauty dish without the diffusion sock above and in front. Ratios were set so that the lights behind and to the side were considerably stronger than the front light. Once I got this image into the computer I lightened the shadows considerably, darkened the highlights significantly as well and set the clarity quite high in Lightroom.

 (Rick A. Brown)

Next I decided on what to use as a backgound. I decided to go with this old sunset at Rocky Mountain National Park.

USA, Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park, sunset from Forest Canyon Overlook. (Rick A. Brown/www.moosephoto.com)

This is an image where an HDR image was merged with a standard image to arrive at this image. You can see a more detailed account of that process here. A general overview though, is that I tone-mapped the image in Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro. This yielded overall a great image, but I hated how the sunstar looked. So, I picked the original image where I liked how the sun looked the best, layered it on top and then masked everything else out.

Finally, came the plane. This took a while as initially we did not have a plane that looked cool enough, in my opinion. Furthermore, I was initially planning on taking the image of the plane in actual flight and we needed to get good enough to fly the plane at me safely. Well eventually we got the super cool Carbon Cub from E-flite and we figured out a more controllable way to get the image. We hung the plane upside down from monofilament and placed a strobe such that it would closely match the light that should fall on the plane if it were actually flying in the image. Then I placed a fill flash near the camera.

 (Rick A. Brown)

This shot was then brought into Lightroom and processed along the same lines as the portrait.

Then came the actual compositing. I opened all the images in Photoshop and selected my Dad and the plane in their respective images using the techniques of quick select and refine edge as described in Matt’s book. Let me tell you the plane was easier to select, even on the sort of messed up background. I think this is because planes have very defined edges where us Homo sapiens have fuzzy edges with all of our hair and what-not. I output these selections from refine edge as “new layer with layer mask.” I then drug the images into the background image and placed them where I wanted them.

Then came the step of trying to make the portrait and plane look more like they belong there. I started by selecting the mountain and sun part of the landscape and putting that on its own layer and using the Average Blur filter to create a swatch of color. I initially tried the whole landscape, but with all that blue sky, it resulted in gray. I then blended this with the portrait and plane on color mode and adjusted the opacity of the layer so that it only gave the two items a little color. Then I stamped all visible layers to a layer on top, the famous [shift][ctrl][alt][e] shortcut. I then opened Color Efex Pro4 and applied the Tonal Contrast filter on Balanced mode to unify the image and give it a little of the gritty look I wanted.

My final step was to make the prop look blurred. I tried to merge from a photo of the plane running, didn’t like that. So I used Radial Blur in Photoshop. This was quite difficult to get lined up correctly and even now, it sort of looks wonky. Thing is, I like it the way it is now.

Take a closer look at this image and look my entire portrait portfolio.

 

B-17 Photo – Technique Overview

24 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Post

≈ Comments Off on B-17 Photo – Technique Overview

Tags

aviation, B17, Color Efex Pro, Flying Fortress, Nik Software, photography, Photoshop, post, Post processing, Silver Efex Pro, warbird

Collings' Foundation B17G Flying Fortress, Nine O Nine. (Rick A. Brown)

This image of the Collings Foundation B-17 has been one of the most popular in my catalog since I posted a link to it on Facebook and Google+ last week. My initial post contained a brief synopsis of how I did the post processing; some of my followers said this method sounded too difficult, so I thought I’d write this post here with some along the way images to illustrate. I used this image of Tillamook Air Museum’s P-51D Mustang. Admittedly, the effect doesn’t look as great with this Mustang image as it does with the B-17, but it still works great for educational purposes. (Small disclaimer, Copyright notices on in-process images should be on the image, not the interface portion. My portal service places the notice automatically and I can’t control its location on a per image basis.) This is the beginning image with just some basic tweaks in Lightroom 4.

 (Rick A. Brown)

To start I right click on the image go to the Edit In option and choose Adobe Photoshop. Once there, I open Silver Efex Pro2. I apply the High Structure, Harsh preset and then tweak the settings to taste. My primary goals in this tweaking are to create interesting structure in the aircraft and adjust for the fact that shadows tend to block up in the successive steps. One tweak that I almost always do and I did in this image is to apply the yellow color filter, this tends to separate the aircraft from the sky.

 (Rick A. Brown)

After creating the Black and White layer, the next step is to merge this with the original color image. To do this turn the Background layer into a real layer by double clicking on it. Then move it above the Black and White layer and change the blend mode to soft light. (An alternative is to leave the layers in their original order and change the blend mode on the b&w to luminosity. Try both, the luminosity method makes the effect a little less extreme.)

 (Rick A. Brown)

At this point, you will probably notice that some areas need lightening and perhaps some need to be darkened. To do this, stamp the visible layers into a single layer at top; this is the infinitely useful [shift] [ctrl] [alt] [E] shortcut. Personally, I use this so often that I have programmed one of my keys on my Wacom tablet to do it. Change the blend mode on this layer to screen, you’ll see the whole image get much lighter. Create a black mask by holding down the alt key while clicking on the create new mask button. Then paint in the areas with white on the mask that need lightening. Finally, adjust the opacity of the layer to blend in this effect. If anything needs darkening, repeat the process with a layer set to multiply blending mode. The image below shows me painting in the mask, for some reason the brush didn’t capture in the screen capture.

 (Rick A. Brown)

For the next step, stamp the visible layers to the top again. Then open Color Efex Pro4, here we are going to do the method that I detailed in an earlier blog post. Essentially, this is a recipe I created applying Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor to the image.

 (Rick A. Brown)

After applying the recipe, I click on the Brush button. This opens Nik’s masking app. I paint this effect onto the plane, then adjust the opacity of the layer to taste, I set it to approximately 75% in this case.

Now it’s time for the finishing touches. First off I stamp the visible layers on top again. Then I open Color Efex Pro4 again and apply the Darken/Lighten Center filter. I put the center on top of the plane and adjust the shape and size of the center to taste.

 (Rick A. Brown)

Finally, I clean up dust spots and do any other tweaks that look desirable. In this case it was just the dust.

 (Rick A. Brown)

I would never claim to be able to come up with all of this on my own. Many techniques in this method I learned from NAPP, with some of my own innovations added in. My Google+ friend Monico Havier encouraged me to try this method with the B-17 and now that it worked so well there, I am really watching closely for other places that I might be able to apply it effectively; very anxious to apply it to some air to air images.

Please take a look at my aviation portfolio, or my full Collings Foundation gallery. Remember most of these images are available to be prints to hang on your wall.

 

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