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Deke's Techniques 053: Capturing a Real-Life Cast Shadow

Submitted by deke on 10 January 2012 - 12:15am.
Deke's Techniques 053: Capturing a Real-Life Cast Shadow

It's one thing to impeccably mask an image into a new scene. But it's another to get the masked image to interact with its new environment. And oftentimes what that masked image needs is a shadow.

In this week's technique, I show you how to capture and cast a shadow from one scene into another.

Garsh, this is a yummy one. Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

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Today I Finish Recording "Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals"

Submitted by deke on 5 October 2011 - 12:15am.

When I released my first "Photoshop Channels & Masks" course for lynda.com, it shot to the top of the Online Training Library and remained there for months. Naturally, I've been eager to update the videos, but as seems forever to be the case, there have been plenty of other things to occupy my attention.

Fortunately, that unfortunate situation officially changes today. Nearly four years after the release of my last "Channels & Masks" course, I am just today putting the finishing touches on its update. Only this time around, we'll be calling the video "Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals." And it contains all new content. (Okay, so there are a couple of archival projects, but I thoroughly rehashed them, so they're new too.)

Here's a sample project, in which I take a couple of foreground subjects, one with lots of hair and the other with lots of feathers:

A woman with hair and a bird with feathers, ready to mask in Photoshop

And I arrange them against a new background, complete with some adventurous compositing techniques and a few synthetic effects:

The two images masked into a new background, with effects, courtesy of Photoshop Read more » 

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The Self-Made Mask

Submitted by LouBrz on 8 December 2010 - 8:00am.

Today's tip comes from from Chapter 26, "Masking Essentials," of Deke's video course Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery from lynda.com. And because this course is all about mastery, Deke takes on tougher masking challenges in this chapter, delving into such deep techniques as exploiting the native components of an RGB image to create highly exacting alpha channels and masks.

Photoshop CS5 self-made mask

Some of you may recognize this image (care of Stas Perov of the Fotolia image library) from Deke's Photoshop Top 40 videos, starting with Feature #33: Calculations. But this is a more detailed analysis, which includes compositing the masked image against a blue sky background.

We'll focus on the segment entitled "Making an alpha channel," where Deke demonstrates how the art of masking lies in using the image to select itself. Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40, Feature #15: Alpha Channels

Submitted by deke on 5 January 2010 - 12:13am.
Feature #15: Alpha Channels

UPDATE: The good folks at lynda.com have replaced the bad old corrupted version of this video with a new one that plays properly. Thanks to everyone who let me know that the old one was messed up!

Masking an image is like poking a hole in the background to reveal the foreground. I use this analogy because A) I'm growing a bit weary of the "white reveals, black conceals" line; B) I'm just coming off a ski vacation in Big Sky, Montana, at the end of which I wiped out on a bunch of rocks at the top of the 11,166-foot Lone Peak (see diagram) and poked a purple-looking hole in my knee; and C) masking is exactly like that, except not so purple. Read more » 

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Photoshop CS3 Mask box art
Amazon.com

Photoshop CS3 Channels & Masks

Essentially a collection of luminance data that controls the transparency of an image, the modest alpha channel informs just about everything you do in Photoshop. and coming to terms with alpha channels (a.k.a. masks) is the most sure-fire way to boost the quality of your work in Photoshop. But masking isn’t easy. In fact, the elusive alpha channel has been described as the least understood feature in Photoshop’s enormous arsenal. Until now, that is. In Photoshop CS3 Channels and Masks, expert Deke McClelland blows the lid off the topic. Read more » 

List price: $149.95USD
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