Following on from guest Zoom speakers, Cherry Larcombe and Colin Harrison, who introduced us to textures and montages, three club members, Jan, Francesca and Andy, demonstrated some of the techniques they used when making composite images.
Jan worked with Photoshop and her first example showed how to replace a bland sky and to add realistic reflections. She stressed that her library of skies were all her own images - a requirement for our club competitions. The second example was formed by selecting parts of three separate images and compositing them to make a creative image. We learnt tips for cutting out elements and adding finishing touches to make a coherent end result.
Andy's first example showed the power of blend modes. Sometimes the right blend mode can save making fiddly cut-outs. For the next example, four separate photos were used to create silhouettes against a night sky. Again blend modes were crucial as was the layer order in Photoshop.
To finish, we had a change of editing software when Francesca used Affinity to show how an underexposed image with a creased backdrop could be edited. She recovered detail in the ballet dancer and replaced the creased backdrop by adding and toning a new texture. A vignette gave a further touch of drama. Her second example used a sample of a flower's petal to form a new background to the flower. This was finished with the hint of an additional texture.
You can see the end results which were created below.
I know that this type of post-processing is not for everyone, but perhaps there were some converts after tonight's meeting.
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| New Sky and Reflection added - Jan |
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| Bernie in the clouds - Jan |
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| Birds added to pier - Andy |
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| Hare and Moon - Andy |
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| Dancer - backdrop replaced with toned texture - Francesca |
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| Flower + texture - Francesca |
