The Daily Texture for 01/28/2015
Autumn At Rivers End
 Like this texture/background? Buy it here for only $2. Commercial Use OK. | Today's Daily Texture is another painted background scene filled with the vibrant colors of the Autumn season. You can use this texture as a background for your subjects as I did here, or you can overlay this texture using various layer modes to bring these brilliant fall colors into your photograph. Today, I used it as a background scene for an eagle in flight {no surprise there!}. I masked out the eagle and placed him on top of the textured background. I also had a nice photo of a buck I got yesterday, so I decided to integrate him into the art in the background. He was a bit bright for the scene, so I blended away some of his fur to reveal the texture underneath, and then using the burn tool, I darkened him up more. But something was missing...it took me a few minutes to figure it out, and finally it dawned on me. If the TREE COLORS are reflecting in the river water, then the deer should also have a reflection! I duplicated his layer, and then flipped him upside down, pulling the duplicate layer down over the water. Then I lowered the opacity of that layer to 28%, which just gave a hint of his reflection in the water. It still wasn't quite right, however, because the reflection was too accurate...too sharp. I found a motion blur tool in Topaz Lens Effects and applied that to the reflection layer, which now made more sense. TIP: Always look at these things when making a composite of your photographs to ensure things make sense to the viewer: 1) The light and the direction it's coming from in both your background and subject - does it match up? 2) Shadows - would your subject be casting a shadow? 3) Reflections {should there be one - if a water scene} and 4) Color tone...if the background has a WARM color tone as this does, make sure your subject also has a warm color tone and not cool. In the beginning of this image, the eagle had a cool color tone -- after placing him in the scene, I saw that did not make sense. Using Topaz Adjust, I gave him a warm color tone and now he looks like he is truly at home in this scene. |
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