Photo Manipulation

[Hytham]

Hi all.
I wanted to to make weird design...i wanna know your opinion about it..and what it's need to be more real
Hope you like it

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[ibclare]

Ick, lol. Cool. Take a look at our Photoshop Challenges of last year. We did puppet manipulations like this.

Shadows. Examine your light source and things like the way the bird's shadow wraps on the finger (though you might end up changing that shadow direction).

Levels, curves, or whatever you want to use. There is a difference between the bird and the hand.

The darkest area of the background could be brightened up a tad.

IMO :mrgreen:

 

[Hytham]

Thank you ibclare for your advice....i will learn more and modify it

 

[Hytham]

I didn't see tutorials yet..actually i can't find something like that here...but i thought of the light direction and i found that i should delete the bird shadow coz the hand is in between the light source and the bird...idk...anyway i modified levels and curves to make the bird more fit to the hand and the background with the light source......what about this ?


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[Dom]

I think your first attempt was a little more correct in terms of lighting.

I think what's throwing the picture off is that the light looks like it's coming from the front of your hand, but there is a massive source of light coming down from the top left, maybe shifting the light so that we can see it's definitely coming from that top left hand corner.

From where the light it coming from I suggest maybe putting some shadows on the insides (left sides of each finger apart from the pinky) and a lot more shadow on the "branch" between your fingers (as the fingers AND the bird would be blocking most of the light from the source it's coming from). There is also lighting on the right hand side of the bird, this might need to be neutralized and changed over to the left (as there is no light on the right hand side of the picture)

Other than sorting out the lighting, it looks pretty cool mate.

 

[ibclare]

I agree with Dom; the lighting is your problem. The background is much better, but now the hand is washed out and the bird's perch is hard to see. Consider, what is the source of the light? Of course there can be a secondary source since the bright light is outside the shadowed realm (so to speak), but because you are in a dim setting, you would expect the source to be dimmer as well. The hand was good in the first one, detailed, not too bright. It was the bird that needed to match better. Then the shadows needed a little rearranging. Figure out your light sources and imagine where the shadows fall. Look at other examples if need be.

And, here is the puppetize challenge we had: http://www.photoshopgurus.com/forum...photoshop-challenge-week-13-a.html#post118625

 

[Hytham]

Oh puppetize!...it's interesting...i should learn it soon !
But i meant that the finger is cut...I'm brutal hahaha

I inspired this idea from this pic...sorry if it's bloody but i wanted to simulate this idea:





Nobody commented on how i did the mix between the finger and the bird's wood..so can i consider that i made it nice ?
I will try to find more tutorials about lightening....Thank you again for your advice.​

 

[crzykate58]

Hola! I think the concept is pretty cool tbh! you have a couple things warring against you. the main one in my opinion is actually the positioning of the hand for several reasons.

1. It almost instantaneously makes the image look flat.
2. The finger the bird is perched on is too long in comparison to the other fingers. Your middle finger should be the longest.
3. And if the bird were perched on that finger, the fingers behind the bird would be at a different angle to compensate for the space the bird is taking up.

try playing with hand positions like this:



Also, your background is fairly busy, so it's competing with the image in front of it. Because the concept you have going is really cool, if i were you i'd want to have it be my focal point! you can do that by slightly SLIGHTLY blurring the background to cause a separation in background and foreground images

The lighting issue is tough in your case because your light source is coming from the upper left hand corner. Which, with the hand being in the position that it is, would mean that it's blocking the majority of the light from hitting the bird, and whatever shadow the bird cast would actually fall to the bottom right of the bird, rather than to the upper left:



it would also mean brightening the part of the hand nearest to the light, right now it's shadowed:



Clare is totally right in that you're going to have some natural light just because it's in the day time. But even still, the photo isn't really bright. Both the hand and the bird should match the setting of the scene. in this case you have a yellow and green hue going on with maybe a tint of red. your hand and bird are more yellow and red with a tint of green easy fix, you just need to put a color balance layer on top of it and you can pretty easily adjust the whole piece to match itself..



i used the following for the color balance layer:

Shadows:
+12
+22
-19

Midtones:
+13
-6
-40

Highlights:
+8
-15
-36

From there, you can use your dodge and burn tool to emphasize shadowed areas or create shadows in places that didn't originally have them. Same goes for lighting. the bird would only have a touch of light around it's breast and neck:



sometimes burning images too much will leave a weird red trail behind, in which case it's better to just create a new layer, set it on multiply, use a soft brush set at 10% opacity and paint over the top of the image with a dark green for more dramatic shadows. Same thing for highlights, sometimes it's better to just use a white brush, turn it's opacity to like 10% or something and lightly build highlight areas:



hope that helps

 

[crzykate58]

it also might be cool to play with textures around the hand! i threw this together real quick just as an example so i know that the lighting and blending of stuff needs a bit of work, but just as an example of why i was saying your hand might need to be repositioned:



the hand being positioned like this gives it automatic dimension, even if your lighting isn't that great. It also gives some breathing room to the bird, like a natural perch i suppose

Background-wise if you choose a background with some backlighting behind your object, SOMEtimes it'll give it a more dramatic affect. and i blurred it so that it made my hand and bird stand out, rather than having sharp image on sharp image

 

[ibclare]

Good thorough analysis and advice there kate. And I love your version. Nice work. Having something "forresty" grow over the hand adds an interesting element.

 

[sam123]

2nd one looks cool

 

[ibclare]

Oh​

puppetize!...it's interesting...i should learn it soon !​

But i meant that the finger is cut​

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and that's basically what is meant by puppetize even if you don't add the strings, lol. Did you look at those examples? Pretty cool stuff huh. Oh :redface: some of it's mine. Just blowing my own horn I guess!​

 

[Hytham]

Thanks a lotttt for your great posts...i will study them and for sure they will be very useful

 

[Hytham]

I read all advices...I think that i got how i must think about lightening...Thank you all

This is the result (I made more shadows on the top left side of the bird because i see that the hand block the light to it) :

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[crzykate58]

this looks so much better!!! great job!

 

[WillAS471]

I find the bird a bit too innocent for this macabre composition. I would prefer a worm slithering through bone and finger, and dripping blood tinged slime.

 

[Dom]

Nice work Hytham, much better

 

[-DaOver-]

Amazing never seen like that one before xD