Matte Painting Pratice: Cliff

In class we are now working on matte paintings. Matte painting can be a photo or multiple photos combined with painting done over to create a whole new mood and/or scene. Given three photos, I had to put them together to create my matte painting. Only beginning the process we are just working with adjustment layers to color correct the images to fit together. I begin with the photo of the man, which he was removed him from the background. I did this by using quick mask tool and I decided to remove the background instead of painting over the man to get the selection. This seemed easier to me after examining the photo. Refine edge was used after getting my selection were I did a few modifies like smooth edge, shift edge, and contrast. After that I then placed my newly selected man into a different background which seemed more adventurous. Now with my man in the new background I needed to replace the sky. Again I used the quick mask tool to on the sky to get a selection, after that I deleted it to make room for my new sky. The photo of the new sky to my convenience fitted nicely and all I had to do was insert the photo. To begin color correcting I started using color balance on the entire photo and brought out colors I thought necessary. Then hue/saturation was applied to lighten up some of the colors. Now I began using levels separately on the three different images to bring the shadows and mid-tones to the same level. Brightness/contrast was used on the sky and the man to help with the balance. To help finish my piece I added a warming photo filter. Last adjustment layer I added and I thought was necessary was the vibrance and this made the image to look gloomy. My one thought on the piece while working on it was the achieving a nondestructive work flow. It’s a step I missed but it was only while working the quick mask.

Color Correction 1

Here are my color corrected pictures. Displayed on the left sides are the original picture and the right side is my work. So first is the bird which I ended up having an old photo feel to it. Right away I noticed an issue with the upper left corner that casted a shadow, bringing the brightness up in the photo made that part very distorted so I decided to turn the brightness down. By bringing down the brightness it lowered many tones of the pictures colors, so my next step was to use the levels tool to bring out some mid-tones along with a slight brightness to the birds feathers. Still the photo had an unnatural look and to fix this I added curves that improved the red color of the bird’s beak and at the same time incorporated a nice mellow yellow to overall photo.

Next for the rooster in the shadow I immediately knew I wanted to make it a day scene. Being the photo was really dark I started with the levels tool to quickly get a rough day scene. After that I used blue channel within the curves tool to lightly add blue to it. Now at this point this I kept rolling and decided if I was going to add brightness/contrast to this photo it was no longer going to be a day scene, but an morning scene with the idea of the sun being above the rooster. With the limitations of only use the top image adjustments for Photoshop for this assignment I used curves again to bring some color in the photo. Lastly to convey a shine around the roosters head and back the levels tools was used.

Now for the Quirigua monument I started off going for night scene. I do so at first with the brightness by lowering it. Then with the levels tools I ended up bringing out a cleaner darker green for the leaves and the grey tones with the monument. Now to my surprise I wanted to make to sky darker and so I thought that by using the blue channels within the curves this would do the job, but instead it made the trees and grass greener. Here is where my original idea switched from night to just improving the photo overall into a beautiful day. I went and added a second brightness/contrast and notched them up. And lastly I incorporated another curves this time from the green channel and this made everything come together attractively.