Foreword

There is a well-known saying that compares painting to photography: Painters include and photographers exclude. Painters begin with a blank canvas and decide what elements to add to create their interpretation of the scene; every brush stroke and mark on the canvas are gestures of their hand and have a reason for being there. Photographers start with a scene from the world in front of the lens that is often chaotic and visually cluttered, and through conscious composition, they decide what to exclude until the scene is just how they want it.

Although the source material begins as photographs, creating a composite image has much in common with painting. Everything in the image has a purpose, which is to build the story of the scene and create the message you want to communicate. The conscious arrangement of these elements, combined with a unified color and a tonal and textural palette, all help to bring the different elements together into a single image.

Compositing allows me to create an image that doesn’t exist in reality. The collage process lets me explore ideas and concepts that would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to portray with a straight photograph. A good composite is like an intriguing doorway, partly open—an invitation to viewers to come inside and see what they can find. When you view a composite, you pick up a conceptual thread left by the artist and follow it to see where it leads.

Creating composites on the computer requires not only a creative vision, but also the technical knowhow needed to implement that vision. This book provides the reader with the necessary technical foundation of the essential techniques and considerations required for masking and compositing in Adobe Photoshop.

Katrin Eismann, Seán Duggan, and James Porto are dedicated photographers, artists, and educators. They’ve been compositing images for many years and have learned how to master the digital tools so that the technical part of the process doesn’t get in the way of their creative vision. Whether you want to create composites yourself or are shooting the source images and having someone else do the compositing, this book is an ideal guide for anyone who wants to learn the art of combining different images together.

Photoshop Masking & Compositing is certain to broaden your horizons as to what is possible when more than one photograph is combined into a new image. With the techniques covered in these chapters, you can learn to create your own composites that will become those intriguing invitations to explore—those delicate conceptual threads to leave for others to discover and follow as they view your images.

—Julieanne Kost

Principal Evangelist, Photoshop and Lightroom, Adobe Systems, Inc.