How to Create a Composite Image With Photoshop

Photoshop and I are friends. The creative possibilities seem endless, and it always fascinates me to come up with a new scene by assembling and manipulating bits and pieces of existing photos. Here's a short tutorial. Keep in mind that there is more than one way to accomplish this scene, and the sky is the limit for your own creativity with this exercise. Maybe it will give you some ideas for your own creative projects.

How to Create a Composite Image With Photoshop:

1. Start with a photo.
   
   
   


2. Make a copy of the original layer.


3. Separate the foreground objects from the back ground. To do this, I'll use the levels control on a color channel: on the layers palette, click the 'channels' tab. You'll see four layers in the 'channels' tab if you're working in RGB color mode. Click on each channel to see which one give the most contrast between the background and foreground elements. In this case, it's the blue channel. Click and drag the blue channel down to the bottom of the layers palette to 'create new channel.'


4. Now we need to bring up the 'Levels' control. Use command-L on a Mac. Work with the 3 sliders on the histogram until you have as close to a black and white image as possible. Click OK.
   
   
   


5. Now 'load channel as selection' by clicking and dragging the modified blue channel copy down to the bottom of the layers palette. You should see a selection (dancing ants) between all of the white and black areas on the screen.


6. Now click on the RGB layer in the 'channels' tab to make the three original color channels visible. The blue channel layer copy that you made should not be visible anymore. Click back on the 'Layers' tab in the layers palette, and your selection will be made on the copy of the background layer that you made.


7. With your selection still active, go to the 'Layer' menu, and choose 'New,' then 'Layer via cut.' You should see the background separated in a new layer from the foreground objects. Deselect the background layer and you should see this:
   
   
   


8. Now it's time to have fun with the photo. I'm going to add a new background scene.
   
   
   


9. Maybe I'll add some neon to the sign
   
   
   


10. Now I'll desaturate the background and original foreground objects, darken the sky behind, add a couple of street light effects, and blur the edges of the foreground objects to blend into the scene better.
    
    
    

Compare with the original photo:



I've learned how to use Adobe Photoshop over the last few years through many ways; participating in online forums, watching tutorials, seeing live demonstrations by professionals, reading books, and just experimenting for hours. If you have some moderately advanced skills in Photoshop, and would like to learn a bunch of cool tricks to save you some time, check out this book by Steve Caplin:

How to Cheat in Photoshop: The art of creating photorealistic montages
(this book showed me how to create the neon sign in this tutorial)