What’s wrong with this picture?
M
ost of the images I take during my frog and reptile workshop unmanipulated. In this instance, though, I composited the Amazon milk frog with the plant. I like very much the position of the frog’s legs, and the colors work well together. But there is one problem. Everything casts a shadow, even the smallest of subjects like insects. Small frogs also cast shadows, and even though the shadows of small creatures are subtle, they exist. Therefore, when using Photoshop to composite a subject with a background, a shadow is usually necessary to make the combination of the images look real. The picture on the next page shows the frog and its shadow, and now the subject doesn’t look like a cut out or like it doesn’t below there. The easiest way to make a shadow like this is paste the frog onto the back-
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