photoshop cs6 family portrait

[hdawg12]

I want to create a family portrait of my son.  I took a picture of him and want to put him in a background I uploaded.  I was able to create a nice shadow to make it look more realistic, but I need a tutorial on lighting because right now he really stands out and the picture doesn't look good.  I tried looking on the internet for tutorials but I wasn't able to find a good one.  Can anyone point me in the right direction or show me a tutorial I can follow to achieve what I want to achieve?  I just need his image, which I cropped out, to blend seamlessly(or as seamlessly as possible) to the background I have.  Thank you

[davescm]

Without seeing the actual foreground and background we can only talk generally, but to make a composite blend nicely look at the following.

1. The colour of the lighting on the subject vs the background. Use a curve adjustment layer to match the warmth or coolness.

2. The direction of the lighting - a background lit from the right and a foreground lit from the left does not look natural. You may need to use a layer mask to introduce new shadows. You can also consider flipping the background.

3. Soft edges (such as hair) usually take some colour from the background. You can brush over such edges with a low opacity brush set to "Color" blending mode

4. The foreground will sit more naturally with a slightly feathered edge. If it is too late and you have already cut out or masked, run round the edge of the cut out (or mask) with the blur tool

5. Also consider whether any shadows would fall on your subject (not just the background)

Hope that helps

Dave

[JJMack]

There seem to be hundreds or thousands of Photoshop tutorials on lighting effect on the web are you stating thay are all bad.

https://www.google.com/search?num=50&newwindow=1&q=tutorials+lighting+effects+%2BPhotoshop&oq=tutori...

[melissapiccone]

If the lighting of your son and the lighting in the image you are pasting him into is very different, it's going look like crap - no matter what you do. Can you post a screenshot? Photoshop isn't magic...

[Trevor.Dennis]

Find a different background that matches the lighting of your son.

If the location is important, find another picture of the location that matches the lighting of your son.

If the light direction is wrong, would flipping the background make it a better fit?

Look at editing the background image to match the portrait of your son, or at least meeting it half way.

Take another portrait of your son in conditions similar to the background.

But if you really need the two existing images to fit together, then curves, dodging and burning are the tools to use.

[gener7]

Wow, Trevor. Your selection and lighting skills are really sharp. Chinatown and Union Square (SF) are not that far apart either.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Gene, the Chinese gentleman was actually shot in Shanhai, but while the two locations are far apart in terms of distance, it was only three weeks in terms of time, as we used them as stopovers at each end of a trip back to the UK.

I forgot to mention that another way to light something, is to copy the selection, and set the new layer to Screen.  That works particularly well IME, and avoids the muddy tonal artifacts you can get with the Dodge tool if you forget to set it to the appropriate target tonal range in the Options bar.  That was yet another trick I learned from Bert Monroy.