To further practice and learn composition techniques and tools, Leigh provided us with another photoshop composition exercise.
For the second composition practice, this is the final image for the composition and I had to work my way through in order to create this composition image:
I will briefly go over the process based on how I created this composition and how it fits and blends in together.
First thing I did was I gathered the images Leigh provided us in google classroom, here are the images we used:
I opened up a new document in photoshop and added a 'new guide layout'. Rows: 5 and columns: 2. From there I added the image 'nucly-grunge-48' image.
For the 'SPACE' image layer, I added curves (by doing CTRL+M), for this curve I made sure the 'SPACE' layer was dark enough to look like space but to keep small bits of detail to retain the image of space. Furthermore, I created a 'PAINT' layer and filled in the majority of spots with a 'soft round' brush. I added a 'gradient map' under the image adjustment option (bottom right with a ying-yang look-alike symbol.) If you have the wrong colour of choice to use for your gradient maps I would advise looking at the colour icon on the left-hand side of the icon.
In the gradient editor, I used a different colour from the white area and this would be a turquoise colour and for the dark end, I added another point in the gradient for the navy blue area.
Next thing I did was the astronaut floating image. When I opened the image I selected the edges around the astronaut with the object selection tool. Feathering out the edges, I played around with the transparency in order to see the missing parts of the astronaut area. Those missing parts would be the pipes and wires, missing portions of the legs. I did 'select and mask' around the entire portion of the astronaut and added a quick mask. The quick mask is an efficient way of knowing what you selected and anything that is unselected still remain in the original image. Once I masked everything I needed, I used an elliptical marquee tool which I placed on the astronaut's head.
I placed the astronaut inside the composition.
Afterwards, I worked on the moon image which will be placed inside the composition eventually.
I placed an elliptical marquee tool for the moon, I needed about the entirety of the moon to be placed inside the composition so I grew the size by doing the transform. Once that was done, I added the moon inside. I clicked on 'ok' for paste profile mismatch
I placed the moon inside the comp and duplicated the moon to the top right of the composition. For the duplicated moon, I used hue/saturation I needed a purple colour for the moon. Once that was done I added a new image I went to file > place embedded. The image I opened is 'flare_23' and 'flare_25'.
I transformed the scales for the images to place them to where the flare light would be facing. The flare faces down. Next thing I did was I used curves for the 'flare_25' layer. I changed the channels of curves for that layer. Once that was done I added 'flare_46' into the composition, place the image and renamed 'flare_46 to 'star'. Further in the composition, I added 'flare_50' and changed the blending node to 'screen' and converted the layer into a smart object. Back to the moon, I did a rotation (from the bottom left area). Then came back to 'flare_50' and masked out the layer
Having re-organised the layers into their perspective places, I renamed one of my flares to 'helmet flare'. I duplicated a few stars to scatter across the composition and I imported a set of brush tools. The brush series is called 'Nucly Compositing Brushes'. I selected 'advanced smoke 01' brush and created a layer, this layer would be used to create the gas for the stars. I made a duplicate for the astronaut and rasterised the layer. For the duplications, I did CTRL+J about 8 times because for the gaussian blur to go into effect, I started at 200 than halve the amount of numbers till I get all the way down to 0.
In the 'astronaut 200' layer I opened up the curves settings for it and I created two new axis points for the table and gave them the output and input settings. Then I changed the opacity settings for the gaussian blur layers (astronaut 200-0). Now at first, I was weirded out by how blurry it looked compared to the tutorial video until I realised I had to merge the astronaut 200-6 layers and changed the hue/saturation settings for the composition
Once the hue/saturation values were placed in I added a new image in the composition I did file > place embedded and stretched out the 'nucly-grunge-18' image to cover the entire composition the reason why I did this is that I wanted to give this composition a worn-out poster type of presentation. For nucly grunge layer, I did image > adjustments > black and white. Once the values were added I changed the layer blending node to 'soft light' and changed the opacity. Afterward I added curves and went into the 'red' channel and added axis points. Furthermore, I also did this for 'blue' and 'green' layers
And that is how I created my second composition from photoshop. Overall, we used the same tools for the previous composition and I prefer this composition over the first composition. There isn't much else to say about this but these composition practices will help me out when I start getting around to creating the poster for the 'Tower That Never Was".