Check my work please - family portrait composite

OrionsByte · Feb 14, 2011

So my mom asked me to take a photo of her with all four of her grandkids yesterday, and it went about like you'd expect - the kids were being squirrelly and goofing off, and it was hard to get a shot where ALL of them were smiling nicely.

As it turns out, I DID get one where they were all smiling nicely... except my mom was making a face. ARGH!

So I decided to see if I could composite one of my mom's nicer poses on to the photo where all the kids look good. This is way above and beyond anything I've attempted before, so I'd like you to take a look and see if I missed anything.

Feel free to give C&C on the photo itself as well. I shot this with natural light coming through the front window directly behind me, and an umbrella'd flash camera right. Personally, if I were to do it again, I'd set the umbrella much higher so the shadows were lower (especially my mom's shadow that lands on the wall).

Here are the two originals before compositing:

And here's the composite:

Thanks!

Robin Usagani · Feb 14, 2011

Yeah.. isnt Photoshop great. It looks like it is fairly easy to clone out her shadow on the wall too.

OrionsByte · Feb 14, 2011

Schwettylens said:
Yeah.. isnt Photoshop great. It looks like it is fairly easy to clone out her shadow on the wall too.

Yeah, I thought cloning out the shadow but was afraid it wouldn't look natural. I might just dodge the heck out of it instead.

And not that it matters, but just for the record, I'm using Paint Shop Pro, not Photoshop.

Big Mike · Feb 14, 2011

I've had to do that on more than on occasion...it's a PITA, so for future reference, try you best to get all of them in one shot.

Also for future reference, try not to mix flash with window lighting (or any type of house lighting). It doesn't look too bad here, but it can give you a world of problems.

mikehaugen · Feb 14, 2011

Now I thought that window lighting (at the right time of day at least) was pretty close to flash lighting color wise- I imagine that's what you are referring to? I could definitely be wrong though.