Shooting Subject and Background Seperately

[brightnight]

I wanted to take a picture of a subject on a solid background and then take a picture of a background and Photoshop the subject onto the background to make like look like they were shot together. I will be shooting both in RAW.

The background:
Shot outside in a bog with water and ice on a sunny day

The Subject:
Shot indoors on a solid backdrop with flashes

How do I approach this shoot? I assume that I should shot the subject from the same height and angle that I shot the background at? I'm mostly worried about how to match the lighting of the background to the lighting of the subject. I already shot the background with just the sun for light but I can shoot it again using the same flash orientation and power I plan to use to for the subject. Can I just shoot the subject with flashes the way I would normally and then use Photoshop to match the lighting so it looks like they were shot together, or what is the best approach for this? Thanks in advance.

 

[qmr55]

How well do you know photoshop?

 

[nickgillespie]

Look for YouTube tutorials on composites. A tutorial will be way easier to follow than an answer here.


Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app

 

[table1349]

Also read up on green screen. It is more complicated than just shooting a subject in front of a solid color.

 

[brightnight]

I don’t have much experience with Photoshop, but I’m not in a rush to get this done. However, getting the shots is time sensitive, but I can spend a month or three learning Photoshop before putting this together. Is there anything on the photo side I should be worried about that would makes things much easier later on, or just takes the pictures and deal with it later? Thanks for all the advice, it is very much appreciated!!!

 

[photo1x1.com]

I wanted to take a picture of a subject on a solid background and then take a picture of a background and Photoshop the subject onto the background to make like look like they were shot together. I will be shooting both in RAW.

The background:
Shot outside in a bog with water and ice on a sunny day

The Subject:
Shot indoors on a solid backdrop with flashes

How do I approach this shoot? I assume that I should shot the subject from the same height and angle that I shot the background at? I'm mostly worried about how to match the lighting of the background to the lighting of the subject. I already shot the background with just the sun for light but I can shoot it again using the same flash orientation and power I plan to use to for the subject. Can I just shoot the subject with flashes the way I would normally and then use Photoshop to match the lighting so it looks like they were shot together, or what is the best approach for this? Thanks in advance.

Hi and welcome to the forum.
the important things if you want it to look real (you already mentioned most, but you can´t stress them enough):

• Use the same focal length
• Use the same angle
  
• Get the same lighting for both shots. If the sun comes from top left in your background, your main light should be a hard light (no softbox, etc.) comming from the same direction. Then you can add fill light, etc. etc. You can do the same for the background and add some fill light, but usually that wouldn´t change too much.

For the studio shot:
the best option IMO is to give the studiobackground about the same lighting - perhaps even the same color as the bog outdoors and isolate it.
The easiest option is to shoot on white background and isolate the subject, but then again you will have some light spill on your subject that will look (slightly) unnatural. But if you use backlighting and shoot your background against the sun (which is pretty modern btw. ), that would look close to perfect.

As for isolation work: if you are no photoshop pro: outsource it. It only costs a few bucks, will safe you hours, days if not weeks of time and those people will still make it better than you do.

Of course you can do everything in Photoshop too, there are lots of talented people out there that create great composites. But it takes quite some time to get there and photoshop has a steep learning curve.

 

[astroNikon]

I just did some of this in Photoshop and it's not too difficult to get into doing it. Though it is difficult to get it "seamless" as in you don't show any artifacts of one image from another.

I did some test shots with a beauty dish in my basement. Some nice shots, except for the background stuff as I didn't even use a background as I was just testing it.

So I went through some painstaking steps to move the images to a gradient color background.
Some of them came out pretty good but others took some time to get done.

I used photoshop and there a couple ways to get this done but you'll have to learn the techniques to do this. I had to use several techniques to get it working right but the results were pretty good. I was thinking of merging them in a nice beach background or something like that.

I used the magic wand tool, with various hardness settings. At some points when there was background color merging with clothing I had to draw a separator, as some points just using the bucket tool to gray large areas out as the magic wand tool kept selecting way more than I wanted no matter how I tweaking the selection settings.

There were other techniques that I also tried that I looked up on the internet but the magic wand one worked best for me.

I'm not at my photo computer to show examples but you'll have to learn and experiment to increase your knowledge of photoshop.

 

[KmH]

While you may have a solid color background, unless you're pretty skilled with lighting the background will not all be the same color in a photograph - it will have gradients.

Photoshop has a a function known as Color Range that would be useful for selecting just an almost solid background that has some lighting gradients.

 

[photo1x1.com]

To add something to the discussion, because I have just outsourced a few isolations again. It depends a lot on the quality you are expecting. If pretty good is OK for you or your clients, then magic wand, etc. might work.
If not, I´d recommend for example this company. I have used their service hundreds of times and they hardly ever failed to deliver exactly what I need. There sure are many other companies out there, but when they approached me years ago, I didn´t even know that I could outsource that kind of work, and since I have been happy with their work, I´ll stick with them.

 

[FotosbyMike]

Lookup Joel Grimes - Joel Grimes and his Youtube Joel Grimes compositing his is bread and butter.

Good luck.