Leaving It Behind

Doing photo composites in Photoshop can be a lot of fun! The image below has taken me about 15 hours to complete – plus the time to take each of these photos used in the composite. It’s a lot of time for one photo, and I’m grateful I had the time to do it, but it really pushed my Photoshop skills to a new level in attempting to complete the composite.

The easy part was getting all of the photos together into one and to get a basic idea of what it could look like. The hard part was thinking of all the little details to add to the realism of the final product. The things that I paid attention to were:

• The rain showing only in areas where there is light.
• The rain puddles on the road.
• Painstakingly selecting the powerline poles.
• Keeping the Shadows on the cars and people.
• Making the road look wet.
• Lighting on everything to match.
• Adding storm clouds to the sky for the rain.

There are several techniques that could have been used to incorporate all these effects, but I used basic Photoshop skills of masking, selecting, and using adjustment layers. Lots of layers. However – the longest part of the whole process was refinement of everything I was doing. Taking a step back and making sure everything was still working together. I would take a break and come back to it and I would have other people tell me what they think and see if there is anything that bothers them. Then I would go back to work.
Without further ado – allow me to introduce to you: Leaving It Behind