|  Step 1: First, as always, you have to choose an appropriate image. For this lesson, I've chosen this image of a Goat (i.e. the image on the left). What made this image appropriate is the position of the car and the direction it's facing. You should be able to tell when an image is appropriate after trying a few for yourself. As with anything else, practice makes perfect - or, at least, a reasonable facsimile of perfection. |
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 Step 2: Using whatever method you're comfortable with, the next step is to extract the object - in this case, the car - from the rest of the image. As you can see in the image to the right, I only needed the front half, so I used the Pen Tool to get what I needed and stopped when I knew I was inside of the area that I was going to frame. (If you haven't started using the The pen tools let you draw smooth-edged paths.'); Activate();" onmouseout="deActivate()" alt="">Pen Tool, yet, you really should. It's so much easier than you think, once you get the hang of it). Once you've made your selection, hit Control-J (Mac: Command-J) on the keyboard to copy it to it's own layer. You should then hide this layer to stop it interfering with the next few steps. |
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 Step 3: Next, using the The marquee tools make rectangular, elliptical, single row, and single column selections.'); Activate();" onmouseout="deActivate()" alt="">Rectangular Marquee Tool, we make a box then, using Select > Transform Selection, we move and reshape the box to fit. When in Free Transform mode, you'll notice that the tool tip changes when you hold Control (Mac: Command) on the keyboard. With this, you can grab any corner and move it wherever you like. The control points in the middle of each side now work like they do in Image > Transform > Perspective. Go ahead and move it around and, when the selection looks good, create a new layer on top of your source image (beneath the cutout you made in step 2) and fill the box with white. You can do this, easily, by making white your foreground color and hitting Alt-Backspace (Mac: Opt-Delete) or Edit > Fill. Now, use Select > Modify > Contract to make the selection smaller. I used a 30 pixel setting on this image, but it's a fairly high resolution one, so you'd have to set yours to whatever fits. With the selection contracted, hit the Backspace (Mac: Delete) key to clear the selected area and make it a frame-shaped object. Don't de-select just yet though.
Note: It might be easier for you to complete this step before cutting the object out so you can see exactly how much of it ends up outside of the frame). |
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 Step 4: Now, with the selection still visible, switch to the original image and hit Control-J (Mac: Command-J), - again to bring the selected area to it's own layer. If you've, somehow, lost the selection, you can get it easily with the The Magic Wand tool selects similarly colored areas.'); Activate();" onmouseout="deActivate()" alt="">Magic Wand Tool - with Contiguous set to "On", just click in the blank area inside of the frame, with the "frame" layer selected, of course. Now, you'll want to merge this new layer with the "frame". This "framed" layer will need a Stroke applied to it. Go to Layer > Layer Styles > Stroke, or click the first button in the Layers Palette and choose Stroke. Make it black and keep it to just a few pixels - enough to see but not so much as to look out of place. |
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 Step 5: You're going to need to place a layer at the bottom, filled with white, to use as a backdrop.
The next thing we need is shadows. In this instance, the car was already casting a decent shadow in the original image, so I cut that out and placed it above the "framed" layer and below the car layer. As you can see, I selected the area that would appear from the inner edge of the "frame" to the outer edge of the image and blurred it a bit. This just makes the whole thing fit together better. Next step is to duplicate the "framed" layer and, with the lower layer selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation & slide the Lightness slider all the way to -100%. I know that there are other ways to make Drop Shadows, but I just happen to like the old ways. Pick up the The Move tool moves selections, layers, and guides.'); Activate();" onmouseout="deActivate()" alt="">Move Tool and use your arrow keys to move the "shadow" down and to the side. I went to the right, in this image, because the light appears to be coming from the left. Also, the car's shadow is a little to the right and it's more pleasing to the eye when you can be consistent with things like light sources and shadows. When they don't match, it leaves the viewer with a "something's wrong" feeling. Even if they can't actually see that a particular shadow is out of place, they'll still get that feeling and will be left with a bad impression of your work... |
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 Step 6: ...Ahem...sorry...little tirade there. Anyway, back to the project! You'll want to blur the "shadow" layer a little via Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and reduce it's opacity. The shadow cast by the object should be the same opacity as the one cast by the "frame". If you've created both shadows yourself, then you can just set them to the same number on the Opacity slider. In this case, my car's shadow came from the image, so it's opacity setting was different from that of the "shadow" layer. I had to set it by eye and here's another place where personal preference comes into play.
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Now all you have to do is unhide the cut-out layer you made in step 2, and you are finished! The image below shows the result of all my hard work. As you can see, I made the "frame" at an angle to match the direction the car is facing and cut off the back end of the car to better illustrate that it is coming from inside of the "picture". Little touches like that can make a world of difference. Now, get to work on one of your own! Vrooom! Vroooomm!!  |
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