Step 1: Intro  |  Step 2: Selecting  |  Step 3: Guy in City  |  Step 4: Making Adjustments  |  Step 5: Shadow  |  Exercise
    

Creating a Giant in Photopea: Adjusting our Giant

Things are looking pretty good to this point, but we do have a few issues we need to clean up to make our guy look like he belongs in the city.

  1. Zoom in on his left foot (that is, the left foot if you are him, but to us the foot that is on the right side of the image - the one that should be going into the building)
  2. Change the Opacity of the guy layer to 50% so you can see the building through his foot...
  3. Click the Eraser Tool...
  4. On the Eraser Tool options bar, click the brush selector drop down arrow...
  5. Select the Hard Mechanical 12 pixels brush...
  6. Remove the part of his foot covering the side of the building, so that it looks like his foot is going in the dark area at the front of the building...
    Notice that in my image above, his pants still appear to be in front of the building
  7. Use the Eraser Tool to trim some material off the pant so that it looks like the pant is pressed against the front of the building...
  8. Press Ctrl+0 (that's a zero) to zoom out so you can see the entire image
  9. Zoom in on his arms...
  10. Carefully remove the portion of his left arm that is in front of the building (leave the right arm alone)...
    It now looks like his left arm is wrapped around the building grasping the side
  11. Press Ctrl+0
  12. Now zoom in on his back foot and remove any part of his shoe that covers the cars in the parking lot so that his foot appears to be behind the cars...
    For me, the adjustment was small, but you may need to remove more depending on where your guy is standing

Be careful when making the above adjustments. They will go a long way to adding to the realism of your scene if done correctly. (Note: there is a car covered by his forward foot, so feel free to erase the area of his foot covering this car as well is you wish)

  1.  Set the layer's Opacity back to 100%

The next issue we need to deal with is that fact that his upper half is considerably darker than his lower half (compare the color of his back foot to that of his face). There are several ways we can correct this, so let's start with one of the easiest and then talk about some of the other possibilities.

  1. Click the Lasso Select Tool...
  2. Draw a selection area around his pants and shoes...
    Don't worry if the selection is not perfect the first time you draw it- you can always adjust the selection by zooming in and pressing the Shift key as you drag with the Lasso Select Tool to add to the selection or pressing the Alt key as you drag with the Lasso Select Tool to remove from the selection - take your time and make an accurate selection as it is important that what we are about to do only be applied to his pants and not his shirt
  3. Click Image then point at Adjustments and click Brightness/Contrast...

    This will open the Brightness/Contrast window...
  4. Set Contrast to 100...
  5. Click OK
  6. Press Ctrl+D to deselect his legs - notice that his legs now match his upper body much more closely than before...

    Pay close attention to his back foot and the difference will be obvious

Some other ways we could accomplish the same thing would be by adjusting Levels, Color Balance, Hue/Saturation, and even the Curves Adjustment. All will give us darker legs, but none of them can accomplish the matching of the vividness of the colors as easily or quickly as using Contrast.

He now has a constant depth of color across his entire body. Yes, his colors are more vivid than the city, and we will deal with both that and the fact that his color does not match his surroundings. Specifically, we need to adjust the tint of our guy to match the overall tint of the city. You should have something similar to the image below...

Notice that while the city is composed mostly of soft blue and tan colors, our guy is made up of bold colors that have a red tint to them. Even his pants, which are blue, have a definite red tint to them. If we leave it like this, our guy will stand out in the picture.

Consider the following image...

Note that while the city in the above image is tinted green and blue, the baby has a distinct red tint to her. Having images tinted in this way is actually very common. Photographs taken outside tend to be tinted blue due to the sky (images taken in direct sunlight tend to be tinted yellow because...well, you get it, right?). Photographs of people tend to have a red tint to them because they are usually taken in artificial light, and people generally look better tinted red. Notice that the baby above looks out of place, and it is painfully obvious that she was added to the image.

Now look at this picture...

Note that this time the surrounding area has a soft brown/orange tint while the boy has a slight red tint. This image actually does a better job of matching the tint, but the vibrant colors of the boy's clothes make it obvious that he was added in.

Now look at this picture...

The baby in this image has been adjusted so both the tint and color depth match the surrounding city. While we know that the baby was added into the image (there are obviously no giant babies), the seamless flow of color across the image means that the baby does not stand out, but instead blends into the scene. This is what we are shooting for with our images - that our additions seem like they belong in the image and do not scream 'I'm fake'.

We are going to fix both the tint and color depth issues with our image. Again, there are several ways to fix this, so let's use a method that not only makes changes to our image that are easy to adjust, but does so in a way that does not alter our original image. Let's work with Adjustment Layers. Adjustment layers are exactly what the name implies - layers that make adjustments. The great thing about adjustment layers is that they allow us to make visible changes to our image without actually making changes to the image itself because the adjustments are placed on a separate layer that we are free to modify, turn off, delete, etc. If this is a little confusing, keep going and it will all make sense.
  1. Make sure Layer 1 (the layer with the guy) is selected
  2. At the bottom of the Layers panel, click the New Adjustment Layer icon...
  3. From the pop-up menu, choose Color Balance...

    Note that a new layer named Color Balance 1 has appeared in your layer stack...

    and that the Properties panel has opened with the Color Balance options loaded...

A quick word about the Color Balance 1 layer. You will notice that there are 2 boxes on the layer separated by a chain...

The box on the left, with the Col in it, let's us know what kind of adjustments this layer is making - in this case Color Balance. The box on the right indicates where on the image the color balance adjustments are being applied. White areas mean the adjustment is being applied, while black areas means it is not. The entire box being white indicates that the adjustment is being applied to the entire image. If this seems a little complicated, so just keep working and it will become clear.

We need to decrease the amount of red in the image while bumping up the amount of blue a tiny bit.
  1. Adjust the Color Balance settings to match the image below...

    Make especially sure that you change the Range to Midtones and that Preserve Luminosity is checked, as in the image above

Your image should have gone...

Notice that the color adjustment is applied to the entire image (compare the concrete in front of the guy - notice that is is much bluer in the right image) and not just to the guy. Our city is already blue enough, so let's set our adjustment layer to only impact the guy.
  1. With the Color Balance 1 layer selected, press and hold the Alt key and click on the layer - Photopea should add a small downward pointing arrow to the layer...

That tiny downward pointing arrow lets us know that the adjustment layer is only being applied to the layer immediately below it, which is the guy layer. Your image should now look like this...

If you compare this to the image above, you will notice that the tint of the background is unchanged while the guy is now much less red. We now need to do something about how vivid our guy is when compared to the city.
  1. Click on Layer 1 (the guy layer) to select it
  2. At the bottom of the Layers panel, click the New Adjustment Layer icon (yes, we can have more than one adjustment layer)
  3. This time choose Hue/Saturation...

     Photopea should add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to your Layers panel...
  4. Alt+click on the Hue/Saturation 1 layer so that it is only applied to Layer 1...
  5. Adjust the setting in the Hue/Saturation Properties panel to match the settings below...
    This will make it so that the colors in our guy are not overly vivid
  6. Close the Properties panel by clicking the Pro icon...

We now have something similar to this...

While in general he looks pretty good and now actually fits in with the city, our adjustments have resulted in some colors being off. Specifically, his skin and his shoes. They both appear to be a little too blue. We need to make a quick modification to the one of the adjustment layers so that he skin and shoes look a little more realistic.

  1. Press D on the keyboard to set black as the foreground color and white as the background color...

  2. Select the Brush Tool...

  3. In the Brush Tool options bar, select the Hard Mechanical 24 pixels brush...

  4. In the Layers panel, click the white box indicated below...
    Remember, this box determines where on our image the adjustment is actually applied

  5. Zoom in on his rear foot and color over his shoe - it should go...

If you look at the white box you selected two directions ago, you may now notice a small black smudge on it...

That is the area you just drew with the Brush Tool. Remember, the white area of the box indicates where the adjustment is being applied in the image, and the back area indicates that the adjustment is not being used there. So what the above graphic is telling us is that the adjustment is being applied everywhere (and since we are only applying it to the layer below, it is actually only being applied to the guy), except where his shoe is. Notice that his shoe now looks more brown and thus more realistic. Let's do the same thing to his skin to get it back to a more realistic color.

  1. Use the Brush Tool to color over his face and arms - he should go...

    The difference is subtly, but notice that his skin tone is much more realistic, but not so red that he looks like he doesn't belong in the image

  2. Press Ctrl+0 to zoom out and see the entire image

Your image should now look something like this:

Let's save our work to this point.

  1. Click File and then click Save as PSD...
  2. Save the image as GIANT.psd in your GIANT folder

Step 1: Intro  |  Step 2: Selecting  |  Step 3: Guy in City  |  Step 4: Making Adjustments  |  Step 5: Shadow  |  Exercise