Shooting for Composites? Here are 10 tips to help make your composite images seamless.

Hey Photographers, this article is your go-to guide for nailing composite photography. It dishes out tips on keeping your lighting, perspective, and colors consistent, and shooting in RAW and high res

Retouchers who work on composites have stories to tell. War stories about the challenges of blending mismatched elements together to make one seamless image. Stories about how mismatched lighting, perspective or depth of field pose a challenge when it comes to bringing them all together in one environment. So photographers I want to share with you, on behalf of my retoucher peers, some tips that will help us help you create believable well integrated image where all the elements blend in just the right way to bring your vision to life.

1) Lighting, lighting, lighting! In a composite image everything must live in the same environment. So it’s essential that the lighting agrees between the subject and the background. This goes double when compositing shots of people together. Everyone in the shot must have similar lighting. Something inherently looks off when the subjects in the image are lit from different angles that don’t agree.

2) Perspective Matters! As with the lighting the perspective in the image must make sense. We notice it right away when the background has a different perspective from the subject. When shooting the elements to be composited keep the camera perspective as consistent as possible. Using a measuring tape and a tripod will go a long way in ensuring consistency here. And remember: this includes not only the height and angle the camera is held at, but also the field of view. A person shot with a telephoto lens won’t fit so easily into a background shot with a wide angle lens.

3) Clean Plates! (Not the kind we leave after a meal.) When shooting a scene where you are planning on adding or subtracting elements, or if some of those elements will need to be moved around it always helps to shoot ‘plates’ of the background without the people and props in place. Sometimes it’s even helpful to have plates shot where the props are added in as well before the main subjects are present in the scene. This way if something, or someone needs to be moved or removed the retoucher can use the plates to cover up the ‘holes’. And, yes, perspective matters here too. Shooting these plates from same perspective means they will all fit together better. One last point here, using a tripod helps make sure all your plates line up properly. Sure we can tweak things in Photoshop a bit, but the results are so much better, and time efficient when everything lines up correctly to begin with.

4) Depth of Field is Foundational! The focus in an image must make sense. And if the background, or mid-ground elements are shot with good depth of field but the subject has a shallow depth of field something’s gonna stick out. When in doubt shoot elements with a greater depth of field. it’s always easier to create an effect that narrows the focus than it is to bring out of focus elements in. One more point on depth of field, it’s much easier to create a good mask for an image that is in focus. Especially when the subject is a person, shooting the portrait wide open with that really cool shallow depth field means the edges are so soft it’s far more challenging to make a clean mask. A decent retoucher can shorten the depth of field easily, so think in terms of shooting elements where the cool look will be added in post rather than in camera.

5) Contrast is King! In this case we’re not talking about lighting. Good contrast between what will be kept and what will be removed makes the masking process much, much easier. This goes double, or even triple, when masking hair. Getting a good mask means being able to see the difference between the subject and the background. So a person with dark hair shot against a dark background will mean it’s really hard to get a good mask for the hair. Sure a good retoucher can paint in hair, but when the photo is shot in a way that it’s easy to see the difference between the hair and the background it’s possible to get a much better mask!

6) Contrast is King Part II! In Point 5 above we talked about contrast between the background and the subject for images that will be masked out. Here we’re talking about the other kind of contrast, lighting. Imagine a scene where the background has very soft contrast but the subject is lit with strong, contrasty light. Something’s gonna look off. Shooting your elements with a consistent degree of contrast will help bring everything together.

7) Contrast is King Part III! Ok, one more point about Contrast. Knowing we just said shooting with consistent contrast in the lighting is helpful it’s important too to know that shooting your main subject a little flatter than you might think can actually be a really good move too. It’s easier to add contrast, to darken shadows etc than it is to open them up to bring in more detail. So yes, the nature of the light should have similar contrast across all the elements, but quite often keeping that just on the flatter side means you’ll have more room for dialing in the amount of detail you want to show.

8) Color Consistency! While it IS possible to adjust the color of the elements being composited it’s much, much better when the color balance for those elements is consistent. Matching a background shot with a cool cast with a subject shot in very warm light just adds more challenges to the process.

9) Focus, Focus, Focus! In point 4 we talked about shooting with a consistent depth of field. Even more important than the overall depth of field is making sure the shots are properly focused and sharp to begin with. Yes, AI driven apps are often doing a surprisingly good job of sharpening photos, however it’s so much better when the shot is sharp to begin with. Retouchers have lots of tricks for sharpening images but those tricks can only create the illusion of sharpness and can’t really increase the level of detail in the shot. A quick double check while shooting to make sure the focus is spot on goes a long way.

10) Framing, Framing, Framing! When shooting elements for compositing be sure to shoot loosely enough so you’re not cutting off parts of the image that might be needed later. Retouchers love to share war stories about how they had to create the top of someone’s head, or add legs in from some other shot. Getting the whole person in the frame goes a long way here in saving time and money down the road. But also remember to reasonably fill the frame as well. There’s nothing like having to zoom way in to clip out that tiny person lost in a big giant frame to make the retoucher wonder about the lost details and pixels.

**** Bonus Tip A word on Green Screens!** Unlike video apps the masking tools in Photoshop are much easier to work with and don’t have to rely on calculations. In traditional video shooting subject against a background with a strong color like Green or Blue makes it easier to ‘Key’ on that color and drop it out. This is because video involves hundreds, or thousands of frames. Imagine having to create a mask by hand for a 30 second scene with some 720 frames… But when masking in Photoshop we’re dealing with just one frame at a time, so the masking tools are a lot easier to work with. This means it’s not necessary to ‘Key’ off a particular color, so using a strong color for the background is less helpful, and given that the color of the background inevitably spills onto the subject. And that means the retoucher has to remove that color contamination as well as masking the subject. Best to keep things simple and just give the retoucher a shot where there is good contrast between what will be kept and what’s to be removed.