Snook Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 Hey Damien. This is a mannequin torso that was photographed on the salt lake that makes up the ground in the image, although I've copied the torso from another photo taken at the same time that was a bit closer so that it's bigger than the original and sits higher in the frame than the original. The sky has been added afterwards as it was shot on a different day (not sure if that's relevant but thought I'd mention it in case it somehow affects lighting etc with what you're looking at). I've cloned some of the salt lake over base of the mannequin to try and make it look like the torso is embedded in the ground rather than sitting on top of it and I've done a bit of burning to try and make it look more realistic but it hasn't helped much. How would you go about making this look real (well, as real as something like this can look)? I've attached the full image as well as a 700x700 crop of the area in question. Please ignore the horrible toning.. it's still a work in progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 Yeah, the bottom (waist) part needs to be a bit darker with shadow, yes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 Yeah, I think so but when I tried burning it, it looked weird somehow. Would you just do it with that method? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 I'd probably lower the Lightness slider on a Hue/Sat layer, and paint that on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 That's easier to get looking okay but I'm not sure if this is right? I'm struggling with the shadow because the sun had just gone down behind a hill behind me when I took the photo so technically it's front lit even though the shadows were basically eliminated by waiting until the sun was gone and a shadow behind the torso wouldn't be visible or aid in it looking embedded. I figure with the sky I added that I could maybe pretend the light was coming from behind and ever so slightly from the left where the lighter part of the bottom of the sky is but I'm not sure if the shadow I've added correctly reflects that or not? Does it need to be softer on the edges of the shadow maybe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 18, 2016 Author Share Posted March 18, 2016 And the full image in case it's easier to see the effect of the shadow overall.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted March 18, 2016 Share Posted March 18, 2016 Now you need a thin but distinct bit of shadowing around the edge of the ground itself. So it looks a bit indented. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 19, 2016 Author Share Posted March 19, 2016 Is this what you meant? I'm not sure if I've done it properly.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted March 19, 2016 Share Posted March 19, 2016 Hmmm ... no, that's not right, is it? We need to find a way to make it look like the ground drops slightly, around the body. Also, what is with the weird straight vertical line on the left side of that closeup? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 19, 2016 Author Share Posted March 19, 2016 Yeah.. it just looks off to me but I don't know how to fix it. Oh bugger, that's where I copied a section of the ground pasted and flipped it and then masked it in and cloned over it to cover up the torso. I've missed a bit of masking. Shall fix that up now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 20, 2016 Author Share Posted March 20, 2016 Did you have any other thoughts on how make it look like the ground drops in toward the body? I tried some more googling last night to see if I could find anything that might help but came up empty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 I'm so sorry, I don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 20, 2016 Author Share Posted March 20, 2016 Bugger. Okay. I'll just have to keep playing. Thanks for trying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted March 20, 2016 Author Share Posted March 20, 2016 In the end the best I could manage was using a photo of a hole in the ground and laying it over my photo, adjusting the perspective and then masking everything out except for the hole itself. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crystal Felton Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 you're missing depth via shadowing I think Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted April 23, 2016 Author Share Posted April 23, 2016 Thanks Crystal. I did add shadowing afterwards but was just showing Damien how I ended up creating the hole, as only using shadowing wasn't working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tony Posted May 17, 2016 Share Posted May 17, 2016 I don't know about the coming out of the ground bit, but to me, it looks to me like there's a fundamental difficulty with perspective that's hindering you. The mannequin and the foreground all seem to have been shot whilst standing. So, with the mannequin's legs cloned out the body now looks like it's floating in the air. This also gives the appearance that the body is further away than it should be (and therefore too big to be realistic). So whatever you do the ground it's not going to look right. My suggestion would be to re-shoot the mannequin from above (or reshoot the foreground from a lower position). I think if the perspective is fixed, the straightforward shadow you've been trying will work better (perhaps with cracks in the ground rather than the hole). In addition, with the sky as it is (lighter to the back right) you could get away with light coming from that direction casting the shadow to the front left, which will help with cracks and other alterations to the ground. You might be able to alter the perspective of the foreground enough with 'transform' to make it work. I don't really know though - this is just my thoughts from looking through this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted May 20, 2016 Author Share Posted May 20, 2016 Thanks for your input. It was shot from lowest my tripod could get to the ground, so I'm not sure what's making you think it was shot from standing height? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christina Keddie Posted May 20, 2016 Share Posted May 20, 2016 5 minutes ago, Snook said: Thanks for your input. It was shot from lowest my tripod could get to the ground, so I'm not sure what's making you think it was shot from standing height? No, that's exactly the problem. It looks like you shot the mannequin from too low a position (from standing or lower). If you shot it from *above*, then this composite would make a lot more sense visually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted May 20, 2016 Author Share Posted May 20, 2016 Except the mannequin torso was sitting on the ground, on location, and I shot them together, from the same position and elevation. The perpective is exactly the same on both the ground and the torso. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christina Keddie Posted May 20, 2016 Share Posted May 20, 2016 Regardless of how they were in real life, I still think this dug-into-the-ground composite would make more sense (to my brain, at least) if you were shooting down on the mannequin -- you expect it to be shorter than you, so that would help translate the concept of being dug into the ground better. I'm mostly just agreeing with Tony that that would be worth trying, if you're really going for verisimilitude here. Which you probably aren't, given that it's a headless mannequin and a very stylized edit. And also noting that he commented that you shot it from too low a perspective, and your response that you shot from below suggested that you'd misunderstood his comment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snook Posted May 21, 2016 Author Share Posted May 21, 2016 Yes, I did think he was saying I should shoot from lower and obviously misunderstood that part of what he was saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kismet72 Posted May 30, 2016 Share Posted May 30, 2016 The lines of the body going into the ground are too sharp, there needs to be some dirt coming up slightly around him with more shadow where the body is entering and round the points on each side where he's entering the earth. I used the clone tool with an irregular brush to bring some dirt up a bit onto his body, then I used two curves layers, one to darken and one to lighten, to use and dodge and burn to create shadow and highlights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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