GILMARSMITH
> Shortcut City
ADDING MOVEMENT AND DEPTH In this installment of “Shortcut City,” I’ll show you how to take an image to another level using very simple compositing techniques. At the beginning of the year, I did a photo series of retro sports images for a campaign. I was scrolling through my library, and I thought it would be fun to create a composite with one of those images.
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Shortcut #2: I want to create a horizontal image, but my subject was shot vertically. When I added the stock images, their edges were hidden by the vertical crop. Let’s fix that with the Crop tool! To access the crop tool, press C. My go-to crop ratio (unless I’m working on a project for a client that requires a different ratio) is 4:5 (8:10), mostly because it works on all social media platforms. I also
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> PHOTOSHOP USER > AU G U ST 202 0
Shortcut #1: The first command I’m going to use is Select Subject because I want to separate the subject from the background. There are several ways to access Select Subject: (1) Click the lock icon on the Background layer to unlock it, and then click Select Subject in the Properties panel (Window>Properties); (2) switch to the Object Selection, Quick Selection, or Magic Wand tool by pressing the letter W on your keyboard and then clicking Select Subject in the top Options Bar; or (3) go to Select>Subject. I got a pretty good selection except for the yellow that’s visible through the strings on the racket, but I can quickly fix that later. With the selection in place, I clicked the Add Layer Mask icon (circle in a square) at the bottom of the Layers panel to isolate the subject. I then picked a couple of images from Adobe Stock to build the composite. One of the greatest things about using Adobe Stock is that I can preview how the images look in a composite before I license them. Using the Move tool (V), I dragged the stock images into the main subject image. I then used the Quick Selection tool to select the white in the tennis balls layer and deleted it.
Shortcut #1
