Manip Tutorial: Australia
For cschoolgirl, a set of screenshots to show how I made the manip of Logan and Marie in the Outback. I'm not sure how the steps would translate to PS Elements, but as with anything in Photoshop, there are a million ways to do the same thing, so hopefully there's a workaround if you don't have the same tools. I'm not sure what your skill level is, so please ignore me if I explain something that you already understand! Also please excuse any spelling errors; it's 2:30 a.m.! :)
On a side note, somehow I forgot to save the layered PSD file of the original manip I made, so I did another quick and dirty one for illustrative purposes. It's not as clean as the original, but it will give you the gist.
Here's the original picture from the movie Australia.
This is the image that I used for Rogue's head. Use the lasso tool to select, then Ctrl+C (or Command+C if you are Mac) to copy the selection.
Ctrl+V to paste the selection onto original image. Um, she's facing the wrong way, so we need to fix that.
Go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal.
Now we need to tilt her face down so that it lines up with Nicole's face. Ctrl+T to transform; as you can see in the layers palette to the right, I have lowered the opacity to 40-something percent so I can see both layers at the same time. This takes the guesswork out of where I need to place Rogue's face, and how big or small I need to scale it. Grab that corner handle of the transform box to rotate Rogue's face as needed.
Ok, Rogue's face is the correct size and orientation. You can see her face in the layers palette to the right; I need to erase the part of Rogue's neck that is covering the scarf, and that dark grey background from the area leftover from the Anna Paquin photo, so I add a white layer mask. Select a medium soft brush in black; make sure the mask is selected and not that little thumbnail of Rogue's face, then use the black brush to erase away the grey background. When using layer masks, remember that white reveals and black conceals. So since the layer mask is white, it's showing all of that selection of Rogue's face that I pasted onto this photo. Using a black brush on the mask then conceals the parts of that layer that you don't want to be visible. This method is far better than using the eraser, because if you make a mistake, you can just hit the x key to switch your brush to the opposite color and go over that area again, revealing/concealing as many times as you want.
Two things that need to be fixed now; one is Nicole's hairdo showing above Rogue's hair, and the other is Rogue's eyes. They are open in the original picture, which looks strange. I'm going to deal with her eyes first. Once again using the black brush and the same layer mask, I brushed away her eye, allowing Nicole's eye to show through. You'll notice that the eye itself looks pretty good, but the color is off. You'll have this a lot when you do manips; every photo has it's own white balance or tone, so you need to match them up to look seamless. There are of course a number of ways to accomplish this, but for this image, I've decided to use the clone tool.
I've selected the clone tool, set at 0% hardness for now, opacity at 100%, and the mode set to "Color". What this does is allow you to select an area to sample color from, and clone that color onto another area, while leaving the detail.
I've selected this neutral looking area here; you may need to experiment with this. I wish the screen capture button would show my cursor...
Once I clone that color, it looks better, but you can still see that the area is darkened; this is because the color mode of the clone tool only affects color, nothing else. I've decided to lighten the area up by making an adjustment layer with curves; I do this by clicking on that tiny black and white cookie-like circle at the bottom of the layers palette and when the menu pops up, select "curves". I pull up the middle of that curve until picture lightens the way I want it. At this point the whole photo is lighter, but I only want a select area to lighten. I could kick myself--I forgot to take a screen shot of this, but what you want to do is select the layers tab, select the curves mask, and hit Ctrl+I to invert the mask from white to black. Black conceals, so at this point all that lightening created by curves becomes hidden. Select a soft white brush, and brush the area over her eye, lightening up that eye area only.
At this point you should take a snapshot of your work, and then flatten. Now hit Ctrl+J to make a copy of the original layer. This is a good habit to get into; always work on a copied layer, and take snapshots often so you can go back if you need to. So now we are going to clone out that extra hair up top. Select the clone tool again; normal mode, hardness maybe around 40%, and clone out that hair, sampling from the blue sky.
You may or may not be able to see it, but there is a dark area above her head now from cloning. This is because even though an area of an image may look uniform to our eyes, the color and light/dark tones usually vary quite a bit. When you clone from one "solid" area to another, this becomes more obvious. So what I do is take the patch tool (sorry it's not selected in this screen shot) - it looks like a little sewn patch, located directly above the brush tool. The shortcut for the patch tool is "J". Select the area where you can see the edge of the dark spot, then drag it to another area that you would like to sample from.
Looking better! Now it's time to put the stripes in Rogue's hair. Take a snapshot and flatten. Then Ctrl+J to copy a new layer.
First I want to desaturate the hair color where the stripe goes. Select the sponge tool, hardness around 50%, flow is around 20-30%, mode is desaturate. Start brushing away the color.
Now I want to darken the blonde hair around the stripes. Ctrl+J to create another layer copy in case we don't like what we've done; it's easier to mask out specific changes if they are in separate layers. Select the burn tool, mode set to midtones, exposure around 40% or to taste, hardness around 50%. Burn as needed. Be careful not to burn so much that you lose hair detail.
Some of the hair darkens nicely, but others stay light. This is when you change the mode of the burn tool to "highlights", and lightly burn those light hairs. Again, be careful about losing detail.
One more thing I think her hair needs is to lighten up her stripes a little, especially on her forehead. Select the dodge tool this time, mode set to midtones, exposure 40-50%, hardness around 50%, give or take, depending on your tastes.
Looking pretty good! Now for the final step. Normally I would mess with some adjustment layers in color balance or hue/saturation in order to maker her skin look more like his skin. But since I feel like being lazy, and since this has a western feel, and since black and white puts more emphasis on emotion in an image, I've decided to convert this to black and white, adding some grain for extra gritty goodness.
And that's it! Hope you found this useful!
On a side note, somehow I forgot to save the layered PSD file of the original manip I made, so I did another quick and dirty one for illustrative purposes. It's not as clean as the original, but it will give you the gist.
Here's the original picture from the movie Australia.
This is the image that I used for Rogue's head. Use the lasso tool to select, then Ctrl+C (or Command+C if you are Mac) to copy the selection.
Ctrl+V to paste the selection onto original image. Um, she's facing the wrong way, so we need to fix that.
Go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal.
Now we need to tilt her face down so that it lines up with Nicole's face. Ctrl+T to transform; as you can see in the layers palette to the right, I have lowered the opacity to 40-something percent so I can see both layers at the same time. This takes the guesswork out of where I need to place Rogue's face, and how big or small I need to scale it. Grab that corner handle of the transform box to rotate Rogue's face as needed.
Ok, Rogue's face is the correct size and orientation. You can see her face in the layers palette to the right; I need to erase the part of Rogue's neck that is covering the scarf, and that dark grey background from the area leftover from the Anna Paquin photo, so I add a white layer mask. Select a medium soft brush in black; make sure the mask is selected and not that little thumbnail of Rogue's face, then use the black brush to erase away the grey background. When using layer masks, remember that white reveals and black conceals. So since the layer mask is white, it's showing all of that selection of Rogue's face that I pasted onto this photo. Using a black brush on the mask then conceals the parts of that layer that you don't want to be visible. This method is far better than using the eraser, because if you make a mistake, you can just hit the x key to switch your brush to the opposite color and go over that area again, revealing/concealing as many times as you want.
Two things that need to be fixed now; one is Nicole's hairdo showing above Rogue's hair, and the other is Rogue's eyes. They are open in the original picture, which looks strange. I'm going to deal with her eyes first. Once again using the black brush and the same layer mask, I brushed away her eye, allowing Nicole's eye to show through. You'll notice that the eye itself looks pretty good, but the color is off. You'll have this a lot when you do manips; every photo has it's own white balance or tone, so you need to match them up to look seamless. There are of course a number of ways to accomplish this, but for this image, I've decided to use the clone tool.
I've selected the clone tool, set at 0% hardness for now, opacity at 100%, and the mode set to "Color". What this does is allow you to select an area to sample color from, and clone that color onto another area, while leaving the detail.
I've selected this neutral looking area here; you may need to experiment with this. I wish the screen capture button would show my cursor...
Once I clone that color, it looks better, but you can still see that the area is darkened; this is because the color mode of the clone tool only affects color, nothing else. I've decided to lighten the area up by making an adjustment layer with curves; I do this by clicking on that tiny black and white cookie-like circle at the bottom of the layers palette and when the menu pops up, select "curves". I pull up the middle of that curve until picture lightens the way I want it. At this point the whole photo is lighter, but I only want a select area to lighten. I could kick myself--I forgot to take a screen shot of this, but what you want to do is select the layers tab, select the curves mask, and hit Ctrl+I to invert the mask from white to black. Black conceals, so at this point all that lightening created by curves becomes hidden. Select a soft white brush, and brush the area over her eye, lightening up that eye area only.
At this point you should take a snapshot of your work, and then flatten. Now hit Ctrl+J to make a copy of the original layer. This is a good habit to get into; always work on a copied layer, and take snapshots often so you can go back if you need to. So now we are going to clone out that extra hair up top. Select the clone tool again; normal mode, hardness maybe around 40%, and clone out that hair, sampling from the blue sky.
You may or may not be able to see it, but there is a dark area above her head now from cloning. This is because even though an area of an image may look uniform to our eyes, the color and light/dark tones usually vary quite a bit. When you clone from one "solid" area to another, this becomes more obvious. So what I do is take the patch tool (sorry it's not selected in this screen shot) - it looks like a little sewn patch, located directly above the brush tool. The shortcut for the patch tool is "J". Select the area where you can see the edge of the dark spot, then drag it to another area that you would like to sample from.
Looking better! Now it's time to put the stripes in Rogue's hair. Take a snapshot and flatten. Then Ctrl+J to copy a new layer.
First I want to desaturate the hair color where the stripe goes. Select the sponge tool, hardness around 50%, flow is around 20-30%, mode is desaturate. Start brushing away the color.
Now I want to darken the blonde hair around the stripes. Ctrl+J to create another layer copy in case we don't like what we've done; it's easier to mask out specific changes if they are in separate layers. Select the burn tool, mode set to midtones, exposure around 40% or to taste, hardness around 50%. Burn as needed. Be careful not to burn so much that you lose hair detail.
Some of the hair darkens nicely, but others stay light. This is when you change the mode of the burn tool to "highlights", and lightly burn those light hairs. Again, be careful about losing detail.
One more thing I think her hair needs is to lighten up her stripes a little, especially on her forehead. Select the dodge tool this time, mode set to midtones, exposure 40-50%, hardness around 50%, give or take, depending on your tastes.
Looking pretty good! Now for the final step. Normally I would mess with some adjustment layers in color balance or hue/saturation in order to maker her skin look more like his skin. But since I feel like being lazy, and since this has a western feel, and since black and white puts more emphasis on emotion in an image, I've decided to convert this to black and white, adding some grain for extra gritty goodness.
And that's it! Hope you found this useful!