TUTORIAL: MANIPS FOR BEGINNERS
1. IMAGE SELECTION
In order of difficulty (easiest to hardest):
1. Low Quality PERSONAL CANDIDS (EXAMPLE)
2. Medium to High quality SCREENCAPS (EXAMPLE)
3. Medium to High quality PROMO STILLS (EXAMPLE)
4. Medium to High quality CANDIDS (EXAMPLE)
5. High Quality PHOTOSHOOTS (EXAMPLE)
In my opinion it's a lot easier to make convincing looking manips with personal candids and screencaps, especially if they come from the same show/movie. The grainer quality and reduced lighting makes it easier to get away with certain things that higher quality images will expose. So I usually make manips from screencaps, but you CAN make them from high quality images (3/4/5), you just have to be more careful and pay a lot more attention to detail. Sometimes no matter how hard you try with images like that though it still won't look natural.
Some standards:
➝ Search for the largest images that you can find. Because you may need to size down at the end to make everything look a little better, and you don't want your images to be so small that you can't do this if need be. I use google images like it's going out of style. Under search tools select 'Large' under size. Sometimes if you find an image you like there will be a link under it that says "More Sizes" and google will give you a list of the same image in all the sizes it has, which is incredibly useful.
➝ The images that you choose to manip together should complement each other. They should fall under the same category. For instance, don't manip a screen cap(1) with a promotional still(2), or an HQ Candid(4) with an image from a Photoshoot(5). The chances of you getting the images to work together is nil to none even if you make everything black and white. It's about the pixels. An images shot with a film camera is going to look vastly different next to an image shot with a high performance digital camera (no matter how much photoshopping you do).
➝ It's always nice if you can find two images that share similar coloring/lighting/environment, but we all know how difficult this can be. Fortunately, most of the manips I make are from the Harry Potter movies which help me out because the images are usually darker and similarly colored. Even if you get a screencap with a yellow dominant scheme and mix it with one with a blue dominant scheme, you can usually match the colorings up in photoshop as long as the base quality of each image is the same.
➝ Decide whether or not you'll be using one of the images as the overall base/background, or if you'll be cutting out both images and placing them on a new background.
I chose these two images for this tutorial: 1 and 2
2. PLACEMENT/ROUGHING
I've decided to keep Hermione where she is and use her screencap as the base for my manip since it has a lot of shadows and open space. I'll be able to fit the image of Draco in pretty seamlessly. Plus, since Hermione's figure blends into the blackness of the image, it would be way too difficult to cut her out and be precise.
Now i'm going to open my image of Draco up. First, i'm going to flip the image (Image - Image Rotation - Flip Canvas Horizontal) since he needs to be facing Hermione.
Now, at this point it's about getting Draco from his image onto Hermione's. This can be by just roughly cutting him out at this point. You can clean him up later. If you have clear boundaries between the figure and the background, you can simply cut the figure out. That's actually what I did for this manip, but i'm going to recreate it with a different technique that will probably help with more manips in the future.
First, I'm going to crop out only what I need from Draco's image. Basically i'm going to leave out as much of the right side of the image as I can. I actually want to keep the left side for right now since it's all black and I can possibly use some of that to hide Ron's figure in the Hermione cap.
Once you've made your rough cut out, drag that over to the image with Hermione. As you can see, the picture of Draco is a lot larger than the one of Hermione, so we'll have to do some resizing. This part is tricky.
3. SIZING/PROPORTIONS
One of the biggest difficulties of manip making is getting the sizing of the head/body of one figure to be proportional to the head/body of the person you are manipping them with. It's really hard to get right and it's mostly something you just have to have an eye for. Concentrate more on the size of the facial features instead of just the whole head. I find this makes it easier to get things proportional. Also, taking a break and looking at something else and then going back to the image will help you spot a size mistake more easily.
To make things a little easier, i'm going to go back to the image of Ron and Hermione (just hide the Draco layer) and i'm going to black Ron out with a soft edged black brush (Size @ 200px, Hardness @ 0%). First use the eyedropper tool and select the color surrounding Ron (sometimes you think it's pure black but it might not be - always better to use this method) and then paint over Ron's head. Make sure it blends into the rest of the background. This won't work for every image. I'm just fortunate that this one has a lot of black in it.
Now once i've done that, i'm going to unhide my Draco layer and set him to screen. This way, I can size him down and still see Hermione at the same time.
Once you've got the size down, place the figure correctly. Draco is taller than Hermione, so he should be placed that way. And i've decided I want his face to slightly overlap her's. Also, I went in with a soft large eraser and got rid of the left side of his image since I didn't need it.
Now that the placement is done, i'm going to put the blending mode back on Normal and proceed to clean up around Draco's face.
4. THE DETAILS
I'm going to zoom in on Draco's face until I can clearly see what's going on. If you're image is too dark, you can create a curves or brightness layer (that you will later delete) on top of everthing and overly brighten your image so you can more clearly see what's going on.
Now i'm going to get rid of the excess around Draco's face. You CAN use the eraser tool, but if you mess something up you won't be able to retrieve it. So I suggest using the masking method.
First, select your paintbrush. Make sure you Foreground color is BLACK and your Background color is WHITE. Select a brush that is at about a medium hardness (you'll want soft but firm lines - mine is at 42%) and choose a brush size relatively small (when you get to certain crevices of the face you might have to go extra small). Once you've set the size and hardness you need to select the layer you'll be masking on (DRACO) and click your Layer Mask button.
Once you click that, start painting out what you DON'T WANT (the excess around his face). Don't worry if you accidentally brush out some of his face, you can fix this later. Just get all of the excess out.
Now you can go back and paint back in something you might have erased too much of. Just flip your foreground and background colors. Essentially, black HIDES and white REVEALS. So by flipping and making white the color you are painting with, anything you paint over that you previously erased will come back or be revealed again.
Once done, you can right click on the mask thumbnail and select Apply Layer Mask.
(I also went ahead and used a larger/softer brush and painted out/erased the bottom line of Draco's robes so they mesh into the body of Ron's figure more.)
Once you are done with that, it's time to get your colors matched up.
5: COLOR CORRECTION
As you can plainly tell, the image of Draco is very yellow, while the image of Hermione is more blue/neutral. At this point, you'll need to decide which image you want to key your colors to. You can key either way or meet somewhere in the middle. In this instance, i'm choosing to key the Draco image until it matches Hermione's. So the final manip will be blue/neutral.
Keying/matching is another tricky thing. I know some of you might be thinking "Oh, just make it black and white" but that doesn't always work. You'll have to do some correction no matter what because even in black and white it can still look funny if the colors/values as well as the contrast of the individual images aren't the same or similar.
So i'm going to start by selecting everything on Draco's layer. You can either right click the layer and select SELECT PIXELS or use the shortcut (hold down COMMAND/CONTROL & then click THE THUMBNAIL BOX (gray and white checkered background) in the Layers Palette).
This will select everything on the Draco layer and only that.
There are different tools you can use by themselves or with each other to achieve the coloring you want. Remember, you aren't coloring your image here like you do on a regular edit. You're basically creating a BASE image. The coloring will be pretty lifeless. But the point is to get it matched. You can add extra coloring on the image as a whole for editing later on.
On this manip, The main thing I need to do is get the yellow out of Draco's image. This is another step that requires an eye for detail. It will just take practice and trial and error. Pay attention to the coloring of the Midtones, Shadows and Highlights.
A Color Balance adjustment layer is a great place to start.
Once you've COMMAND/CONTROL + Clicked the layer you're adjusting and everything on that layer is selected, go to the button on the layers palette to apply an adjustment layer. I chose Color Balance first.
These are my settings:
I just adjusted the Midtones and Shadows. I'm concentrating on going away from the Reds/Yellows and moving it more toward Blue/Neutral/Green as to match the coloring in Hermione's image. Play around with the sliders and experiment until it looks right.
At this stage I think i've done most of the work. But Draco's hair is a little too green. So i'm going to Command/Control + Click and select everything in the Draco layer again and apply a selective color layer on top of the color balance one.
As you can see, I'm just adjusting the Greens and toning them down in his hair. I left all other colors in the drop down alone.
Almost done! He's still a little dark in comparison to Hermione. So i'm going to repeat the last few steps and add a curves layer on top. Very minimal but you can still see a difference. Remember you are only selecting him and applying these adjustments. If you don't select only him (with marching ants around his figure only), they'll apply to Hermione as well and you don't want that.
At this point i'm satisfied with the color matching. You may not get it right 100% of the time. If you just can't get it matched, you can always make it black and white and then play around with contrast/brightness until you get it the way you want it. I often make my Harry Potter manips black and white since achieving a coloring I like is usually difficult.
6: FINAL DETAILS
Since Draco's face is over Hermione's, I think adding a subtle drop shadow is in order. In this case, I duplicated the Draco layer and then applied a Drop Shadow to the one on the BOTTOM. Here are my settings:
Once you are happy with the base image, you can add coloring for editing!
And here is my final:
This was a pretty simple manip. I didn't really want to do a tutorial on one that was too complex because I didn't want people new to manipping to get too overwhelmed or lost. Every situation and set of images is different. Sometimes I use different tools or techniques to achieve what I want. Sometimes you'll have to rotate an image or build parts of an image to make a manip work. But I think once you get the basics of what I went over here, you should be able to do those more complex manips more easily. If you have a question about anything or feel I didn't explain something well enough just let me know! Also, if there's a manip i've done in the past that you want explained because you didn't feel it was covered here, just let me know and i'll try to explain. Hope this is helpful. :)