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water bottle composite


haroldg

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Hey guys, I"m new here and I just wanted your advice. I'm trying to make this water bottle look natural to it's background scene. I'm trying to match the environment but am struggling. It looks like a cloudy day and I tried to make my water bottle blend into the background, but it still stands out like a sore thumb. does anyone have any tips and advice? What should I mess with more? Saturation, brightness/contrast, etc? I tried all of them ,but can't seem to get it right. My water bottle is black with silver logo and wording, just fyi

lady_sitting_lake.png
 

IamSam

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Hello and welcome.

The major thing I notice is that the water bottles perspective is off. Due to the camera angle of the photo of the girl you would need a bottle with the same or similar perspective like this.......
24-oz-bpa-free-tritan-plastic-water-bottles-pg119-clear.jpg

uxamcrhf_rvca,fg_wht_bck1.jpg

You can see the tops of the water bottles.
 

thebestcpu

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Hi haroldg
Trying to fit what appears to be a studio shot product into an outdoor scene is quite the challenge and the eye/brain combination can pick up on subtle differences triggering that "something is not right" feeling.

I agree with IamSam's observation and here are some others that seem to stand out to me

- The scene lighting is quite soft with very subtle shadows and those shadows appear to be coming from above and a bit behind the camera to the upper left. The image of the bottle looks to me as the lighting is from the left and right (see reflections on bottle collar) and the strongest on the right. And similarly, the shadow at the bottom of the bottle similarly does not match the scene shadows.
- The bottle is quite a high contrast dark black. If you took that actual product and put it in that scene, I bet it would not be so black and maybe even some fine paint texture showing. Note that the black straps for the backpack often in product shots inside would probably have very dark tones compared to what they are in this outdoor scene. The best black product paints still reflect more than you would think. You can try this out with any dark object and take it out into soft/cloudy outdoor lighting and give it a look
- You might even get some color mixing from the pier wood up onto the bottle which would integrate the bottle a bit more into the scene. This would be subtle yet would tie the product into the scene.

All depends on how realistic the image needs to be. You are taking the right steps in letting your eyes be the judge if it looks like it fits in. I don't know it you have access to such a bottle yet shooting the bottle with the same perspective and lighting would go a long way to making it match better. It seems as if it should be an easy project yet I have struggle the same as you with getting all the subtleties just right so it doesn't stand out. Best wishes on your project.
John Wheeler
 

haroldg

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Thank you both for you great feedback. I will try a different perspective for my water bottle. That would help as well as what John says. I'll make those changes and show you the update.
 

haroldg

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Thank you both for you great feedback. I will try a different perspective for my water bottle. That would help as well as what John says. I'll make those changes and show you the update. I don't have a good camera so I'm taking them from my samsung galaxy J7 phone. I changed the camera settings to get the clearest highest definition that I could get with my phone. I know its not ideal, but it's all I have for now.
 

haroldg

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Here is my revision. It's hard to do shadows when you already have a dark black water bottle, but I did the best I could. I also lightened up the water bottle as to fit the background image. I applied a color lookup on the whole image(composite and background) so everything blends in together as best it could. It's not perfect, I know. I'm sure there will be more improvements that need to be done, but I think its a lot better than when I first started out. Just looked at a bunch of youtube videos and applied it to my image.

draft_1.jpg
 

thebestcpu

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Impressive improvement haroldg.
I bet most people would not be able to tell that it was placed there.

Within the limits of the camera shot you took, there is only one quite minor item that stood out to me when and I had to zoom in. The base of the water bottle was not quite an ellipse and seems slightly cut off given the impression of a slight dent. That would be any easy edit on a mask or some touch up.
Again quite impressive improvement
John Wheeler

Screen Shot 2019-10-20 at 10.10.28 PM.png
 

haroldg

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thanks, thebestcpu. As for the base of the water bottle, should I just round it off a little more with the shadow. There isn't a dent, but you're right, it does look like there is one. The original image is round.
 

thebestcpu

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Hi haroldg
Since I don't know your layer stack it is hard to advise.

Here is what I would do when creating the overlay
- Place bottle image in its entirety in its own Layer above the background layer
- Create a Layer mask to only show the part of the bottle that I wanted
- Make all necessary adjustments
- If pixel edits are required I would do that on yet a separate layer
- If at this point I found the dent, I would go back and adjust the Layer mask to include more of the water bottle or take off some extra, whatever made sense.

So to the first order, I would not paint pixels in the make the correct rather correct the mask.

However, the approach you mention would work just fine. I usually prefer to work in a non-destructive basis so I can go back and make changes or totally undo if I wanted.

So that is a long way of saying it is totally up to you and there are a vareity of ways to go about it.
Best of skill to you
John Wheeler
 

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