| Joined: | Thu Apr 19th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4435 |
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One of the biggest problems was getting the lighting right...because many stock 'garden' shots are taken when the sun is out...unlike the studio shots!!!!
The client selected some photos to use with my guidance but they specifically wanted to use the image below....which had dappled shade and leaf shadow.
So I thought I would share a couple of very simple techniques I used to get the result they wanted.
Clearly for the furniture to sit under the tree, the leaf shadow needed to be projected onto the parasol and any exposed seat mats. Additionally the dappled sunlight had to be removed from anywhere under the parasol's shade!
What I did was to take a section of lawn on a layer, desaturate it, boost the contrast to a black and white version, delete the white, blur it all slightly and overlay it on the areas like the parasol and seat cushions. Then erase the areas you dont want 'dappled' and drop the opacityto suit. (Might be a bit too light in my example here)
And the grass bits?
Well placing objects on grass can be difficult to 'ground'. Adding realistic shadows around thin legs is awkward...so i cheat. Take one of the custom brushes ( like a trident ) drop its size right down and clone some grass 'blades' around the leg ends. Not completely...just at points where the grounding looks the worst. It gives the impression the legs have 'sunk in' a bit!
Attachment: dappled shade and grass.jpg (Downloaded 40 times)
Last edited on Fri Apr 12th, 2013 10:31 by Eric
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Eric