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Photo Blending for Max Realism


Vince Joseph

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Hey Guys,

Looking for a critique from you guys on how this photo looks. It is "Photoshopped"

Let me know what changes you would make to make it more realistic... Thanks for all the help. Still new to photoshop.

All My Best
 

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  • New York Trip.jpg
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IamSam

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The lighting of the subject is off. It's coming almost straight down on the subject which is much different than the buildings, whose light source is coming from lower to the horizon and to the right.

The main problem you have here is the the perspective of the human subject is way off. The subject needs to photographed from a much lower angle. Your image, as is, will always appear fake/Photoshopped.

Take a look at these reference photos so you can see what I'm referring to. The subjects perspective matches the perspective of the buildings. Your subjects perspective look to have been photographed more straight on.

1.jpg

3.jpg

5351.jpg
 

Tom Mann

Guru
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In addition to the issues pointed out by Sam, IMHO, the first thing that screams, "Caught you: Photoshopped!" is the sharp line that separates the top of the subject's head from the background:

New_York_Trip-tjm01-acr-ps02a-01_crop_top_of_head.jpg

This tells me that this image is either (1) a full blown composite, or, (2) at minimum, the person was treated differently (in PS) from the buildings, but the selection of the person wasn't done well.


The second thing that caught my eye was that even though you attempted to convert everything to grayscale, you left a bit of color in the image. I doubt this is intentional. The color that remains isn't very obvious, but to me, it screams, "Photoshopped!!!", whereas if an image was either left in full color or converted completely to B&W, these options are more common (ie, than just a trace of color remaining), and are accepted by almost all viewers. The remaining color can easily be seen by cranking up the vibrance and saturation controls. In the image appended below, I also attempted to minimize the black line / selection error discussed above:

To be honest, I prefer a color version to a B&W version of this image because (a) color better separates the person from the background, and (b) color (if done properly) can distract the viewer's attention away from errors in the image.

With respect to the point Sam raised about the apparent difference in perspective between the person and the building, thereby suggesting this is a composite image, personally, I can't be sure about this because, in principle, the person could have been leaning inwards towards the camera, and this would have made his verticals converge less than those of the buildings.

HTH,

Tom M
 

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IamSam

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Tom said:
With respect to the point Sam raised about the apparent difference in perspective between the person and the building, thereby suggesting this is a composite image, personally, I can't be sure about this because, in principle, the person could have been leaning inwards towards the camera, and this would have made his verticals converge less than those of the buildings.
Great point Tom, I had intended to mention this in my post and forgot. I had decided that the lighting issue eliminated this as a potential explanation.
 

Paul

Former Member
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Good effort mate but low colour saturation gives it a very flat and unrealistic look, basics for this type of work include first and foremost edge awareness/cleanliness.
 

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