affinity photo Photo Composite Using Affinity Photo

[Indranil Sen]

I created this photo composite in Affinity Photo. The composition work was a fantastic experience. I am attaching the final composite image followed by the two source images. Several Adjustment and Live Filter Layers have been applied. Some of them are Brightness/Contrast, Vibrance, Curves Adjustment, High Pass, etc. Needless to say, the layer mask technique has been used. Please let me have your feedback.

 

Edited Tuesday at 10:34 AM by Indranil Sen

[GarryP]

That’s a nice try if this was your first attempt, and much better than my first attempt was.

I have some minor comments...

The image of the exterior of the shop looks strange to me – kind of ‘smushed’, blurred, and a little ‘unreal’ – and that detracts from the overall look. I keep thinking: “What’s going on with that shop/pavement?”

She seems to have a bit of an ‘outline’ in some areas, for example to the left (dark) and right (light) of her arms – see attached image. Masking/isolating people with all the curves/shadows etc. can be very tricky to get right and takes a lot of practice.

The hair has some ‘haloing’ (might not be the right word) but hair can be very difficult to get just right.

I’m not sure that the shadows on the woman and shop ‘match’ but that’s not always something that needs to be perfect.

This sort of work is something that takes a lot of time, effort, and practice to learn to do well (and I’m definitely no expert in this area), so keep experimenting and learning.

[smadell]

Good morning @Indranil Sen. This really is a nice first attempt, but I have a few comments (and I'm going to be a bit more critical than @GarryP. Please don't take anything personally!!)

There are a couple of issues that jump out at me with your composite. First, the mask you created has retained parts of the blue background. These are showing up in-between strands of hair, primarily. There are a number of ways to deal with that, even though they are not all equally successful. Probably the best way to deal with this is when you have made your selection of the girl (in the original image, with the blue sky background) choose the Refine… button and do as good a job as you can. When it comes time to Output your refinement, choose "New Layer with Mask." This choice will do what the Photoshop folks call Decontaminate Colors, and it will try to do a decent job at getting rid of the blue background, even when it's contained inside the mask. One other choice might be to use the Smudge tool. If you have a fairly straight border, you can select the Mask, then use the Smudge tool to push some of the Black in toward the edge. This will tend to contract the mask (softly) and get rid of a halo. Another way to use the smudge tool is shown in the video below, and it involves selecting the photo layer (not the mask layer) and slowly and methodically smudging the color out toward the periphery. The smudging will be constrained by the mask, and can help get rid of any unwanted background color that has invaded the masked area. This tends to be a better choice for things like hair. Obviously there are lots of other ways to clean up masks, and a couple of hours searching YouTube will help a bunch.

 

The other big issue with your composite is that the color and the lighting don't match. I know that GarryP was fairly forgiving in that regard, but it sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I've included a couple of images below. The first one is an initial composite where the cutout of the girl is placed onto the background. The "smudging" has been done, but nothing else.

My next step was to correct the color. I chose to use a Fill Layer, with the blend mode set to Divide. I have found that this is a great way to correct colors, with the ability to tweak a lot of nuance into the result. There is a great YouTube video by Robin Whalley that goes over the process in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEaPq0aaDCU&list=PLTWb7_iVz4-ps-wWDftzf_yolpJwui_4Z&index=3

Having brought the color back to a more natural place, the lighting has to be dealt with. The problem is that the original photo of the girl was shot under fairly harsh lighting, and there are very distinct shadows. The shadows are quite dark, and the highlights are quite light. The background shot of the Starbucks store was shot under very soft light; the shadows are almost non-existent. Matching the lighting on the cutout girl will be very, very difficult, but I tried to soften the light with a curves layer.

Here is my version of the composite, with the changes above included.

[Indranil Sen]

My heartfelt thanks to @GarryP and @smadell for the thorough and constructive reviews.