Hour20.Compositing

Hour 20. Compositing

What You'll Learn in This Hour:

• Sources for Images

• Making One Picture from Two

• Realistic Composites

• Replacing a Background

• Composites from Nothing

• Photomerge

• Panoramas the "Hard" Way

Compositing can be known by other names . It can be combining , or making a collage, or photomontage . Whatever it's called, the goal is the same: To make one picture from pieces of other ones. Photoshop is the ideal program for this kind of work for several reasons. First, it has the tools to assemble pieces of different pictures. Second, it gives you the ability to work in layers . Third, its filters enable you to blend pictures and add shadows and reflections more easily and effectively than any other graphics program can.

You can use the techniques described here, along with the ones you've already learned, to produce all sorts of surrealistic images, and (for many people) this is what Photoshop is all about. For others, myself included, compositing is more often a way of making up for deficiencies in the original picture.