Introduction: Concept, Craft, Vision

We photograph to explore. Each time we raise a camera to our eyes, we see two worlds, our interior world and of course the exterior world that the camera lens is focused on. We photograph what catches our eye; what is important to us; the ideas and questions we are trying to express and resolve; and in many cases what a client is paying us to photograph. Each person has a unique point of view, and even if we were all in the same place at the same time with the identical camera and lens combination, what we each perceive, frame, and create would be uniquely different.

We work with Photoshop to refine and deepen our exploration of our imagination, to create, and to make the unreal very real. Being a visual artist requires you to see (not look), be honest (not cynical), be curious (not stubborn), and be open to exploration, learning, making mistakes, and starting over again. Being a visual artist involves showing the world what is important to you, and with each image you are portraying yourself.

Collaboration and Update

The first edition of this book was released in October 2004, and as you know, Photoshop has been updated and improved upon at a geometric rate since then. What took hours of work in 2004, such as pulling a fine-detailed mask can now be accomplished in a few minutes with the Refine Edge controls. But one thing remains the same—visual talent requires time and practice to develop confidence and skills. On that note, I asked and was greatly thankful that Seán Duggan and James Porto agreed to collaborate with me on updating this book. Seán, who is an outstanding educator and fine artist, concentrated on the “Creative Compositing” and many “Essential Skills” chapters. Jim, who brings decades of photographic and commercial experience, focused on the “Photography,” “Lighting,” and “Photorealistic” chapters. I had the pleasure to write the “Art of Compositing” chapter and then delve into the finer points of the “Channels” and “Fine-edged Masking” chapters. In all honesty, I would not have updated this book without Seán and Jim, and I owe them more thanks than I can ever express. They both put many more long nights and countless weekends into this book than they had imagined they would. I’m sure that there is an effigy doll full of pins in it that bears an uncanny resemblance to me on their desks. Ouch and thank you!

Is this Book Right for You?

This book is right for you if you enjoy working with photographs, and have ideas to express and explore by combining multiple images. This book is right for you if you’re excited by the possibility of staying up late at night to finesse a perfect mask or to combine images in new and unusual ways. Masking and compositing requires flexibility and dedication: There is no “make great art” button on your keyboard, and it often takes a few attempts and approaches to get an image right.

This book is not for you if you don’t have the time, curiosity, or patience to read through the examples, try them out, and then—just as we push our students—take the techniques further by applying them to your own images.

You have three ways to learn the techniques in this book:

• By reading the examples and looking at the images.

• By downloading the images from www.peachpit.com/pmc2e, and with the book in hand, re-creating our steps.

• By taking the techniques shown here and applying them to your own images. As you work, you’ll need to adjust some of the tool or filter settings to achieve optimal results. It is exactly at that moment, when you are working with your own images, that you’re really learning how to mask and composite.

This is not an introductory book. To get the most out of it, you should be comfortable with the fundamentals of Photoshop, know where the tools are and what they do, and know how to execute common tasks, such as how to activate a layer or color balance an image. We all tried to write a book that we would want to buy or that would interest intermediate and advanced Photoshop users who are looking for indepth and challenging learning materials.

As you flip through the book, you’ll see that all of our screen captures were taken on an Apple computer. If you’re a Windows user, don’t let that deter you from this book. Photoshop functionality, for the greatest part, is identical on the Macintosh and Windows platforms. All the features discussed in the book are available on both platforms, and the interface is nearly identical. When offering keyboard shortcuts, we give you both Macintosh and Windows commands. The command for Macintosh appears first, followed by the command for Windows, which appears in parentheses, like this: Command+Option+X (Ctrl+Alt+X).

The Structure of the Book

Creating art is part craft and part imagination—one without the other gives you lifeless and banal results. With this book, we address both—sometimes with words, but many times more quietly and effectively by featuring images created by professional photographers, creative artists, and a number of our students. We are fortunate that they trust us with their work and that we all can benefit from the insights and talent that the images reveal. New to this edition of the book is the “Artist in the First Person”—a double-page interview featuring one artist, photographer, or illustrator’s images and insights.

This book should really be called Photoshop Vision, Photography, Selections, Masking, and Compositing, but that title would be too long to fit on the spine of the book! However, the four sections of the book reflect how important and interrelated creative vision, photography, selections, masking, and compositing really are:

Part 1—Inspire: Seeing & Creating

Part 2—Expose: Photography for Compositing

Part 3—Skills: Selections & Masking

Part 4—Projects: Putting It All Together

The first part of the book addresses the history of compositing and the creative process. The second part of the book focuses on the photographic issues of planning, composing, lighting, and completing the photography of source materials and environments. The better the initial photography, the more successful the final composite will be. The third section bursts with Photoshop information and techniques on selections, layers, layer and channel masking, and maintaining fine details. The final part of the book is divided into two chapters—“Creative Compositing” and “Photorealistic Compositing,” and even if you prefer one type of composite over the other, we recommend that you don’t skip a single page, because the same skill or technique can be used to work on and create a wide variety of images.

Each chapter starts with a brief overview of what is covered in the chapter. We always start with a straightforward example that leads to more advanced examples. You may be tempted to jump to the more advanced sections right away, but we don’t recommend it. The introductory examples serve as the foundation for the advanced examples, building on the same tools and techniques.

Although this book was an ambitious project from the very start, there are many Photoshop aspects we do not cover. We concentrated on the (for us) most exciting aspects of image making—combining, juxtaposing, and blending images to express new ideas and explore new worlds.

We used the latest version of Photoshop CS6 when writing this book. If you are working with earlier versions, you will still learn a lot, because the most important tools for masking and compositing—layers, alpha channels, and blending modes—are a part of previous versions. And this book will also be useful long after the next release of Photoshop.

Tutorial Files and Pen Tool Chapter

Please visit and bookmark www.peachpit.com/pmc2e to download the tutorial images. Many chapters have up to 12 JPEG images that you can download to work and learn along with as you read the book. Posted images are signified by an icon and a name in the book, such as

ch10_hulagirl.jpg

Many of the images in the book originated from our own image and photography collections. The copyright of all images used in the book and posted on the website remains with the originator, as noted throughout the book.

For those specific images that we didn’t have permission to post on the book’s website, we recommend that you use similar images from your own photo collections to follow along. Although you won’t be using the exact image we used, the issues being addressed are so universal that we’re sure you’ll be able to learn the techniques using your own images. After all, you’ll probably be branching out to your own images sooner rather than later.

Due to page count and print quality, we opted to update and post the “Pen Tool Power” chapter on the book’s website at www.peachpit.com/pmc2e. The PDF is laid out exactly like the book, and we hope it allows you to call the Pen tool a friend, not your foe!

Note to Educators

This book was built around the techniques that we have taught over the years to the numerous students in our digital- and creative-imaging classes. We hope that this book can help you teach Photoshop, and that the examples and images we have provided will help you learn and demonstrate the concepts and techniques of masking and compositing. As teachers, we’re sure you know how much time and work is involved in creating exercises and preparing materials that fulfill all the needs of a classroom. We ask that you respect our work and the work of the many contributors and imaging professionals featured in this book by not copying pages of the book, distributing any images from the website, or otherwise reproducing the information, even if paraphrased, without proper attribution and permission. Of course, if students own their own copies of the book, they can freely download and use images from the website in the classroom.

Closing Thoughts

It is the experience of life that the passionate visual artist reaches into to find the creative spark of self-expression. We create images to explore, discover, reveal, and express ourselves, and they often end up being more profound than our words. We hope this book inspires and encourages you to discover, create, and express your own images. We would love to hear from you. Please email your comments about the book and show us how you’ve taken the techniques in these pages and gone further with them.

Best regards, Katrin Eismann, Seán Duggan, James Porto [email protected]