Compositing Comments PLEASE

Bilsen · April 19, 2013

For those of you who deal in compositing, this is my first stab at dropping a background into the Cyndia set of our World Tour project.

Simple questions: What's right? What's wrong? How do I improve this image??

Hackbone · April 19, 2013

Not that bad. Lighting does not match exactly so it looks a little 3Dish.

Dreadnote · April 19, 2013

Not a compositing issue per say, but for some reason her stomach is yellow and blotchy.

Tinstafl · April 19, 2013

Pretty good job. Te stomach looks funny as was mentioned.

Mike J · April 19, 2013

You did a good job on the extraction. The hair looks good which is what has been giving me fits lately.

The stomach does look funny. The blotch at the top and the way the skirt lays at the bottom of her stomach are doing some pretty unflattering things.

As Hackbone mentioned, the lighting is making it look 3D. You've done as many of these composites as I have so my 2 cents are worth just that...:D ...but here goes...

From the tutorials I've watched, you need to pay attention to both direction of the light and the color of the light. The direction of light on the BG and the subject looks to be mostly consistent to me - from camera left but the BG light does appear to be coming more from the side while the subject's main light is more towards the front. Not too bad though.

The color tone of the BG will rarely match that of the subject. One technique has you apply the same photo filter effect to the BG and subject to bring them closer together. The other technique finds the average color tone of the BG and uses that tone the subject. The steps were something like this:
-copy the BG layer and move it to the top of the stack
- on this layer do a Filter->Blur->Average. This turns the layer into the average color of everything on that layer
- Use a clipping mask to add this color to the subject. This works if you brought in the subject along with the cutout mask.
- Change the blend mode to color and reduce the opacity to about 20%. This tones your subject towards the BG.

I've never tried this method so I don't know how it would work here. I wonder if you could do it the other way and get the average color from her and then use that to tone the BG.

EphTwoEight · April 20, 2013

Hands are white, (and blown out) gut is yellow, and forehead is in between.

But I like it otherwise. Most people wont notice them things anyway, so I'd say keep it.

Bilsen · April 20, 2013

Thanks all.

Mike, I need to try that color averaging technique.
Eph, next version will correct those things.
Hack, you have a good eye.

Dreadnote · April 20, 2013

I'm kind of curious as to what your process is, specifically, shot number 3 here:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=233924

doesn't manifest any of the odd color issues shown in this composite. I am assuming that these were all taken at the same time with the same lights. So what happened? What did you do to get these odd color shifts? Perhaps with that information more useful pointers would be possible.

Bilsen · April 20, 2013

Hi Dread,

Bthe original RAWs had her belly as a bit too bright due to the fact that her face was madeup but not her body. As a result, her light skin on her stomach needed to be toned down a bit in post.

As for why the color shifts here, I need to go back and do a step by step analysis but I suspect it happened when I tried to balance the brightness with the curves too.