Invidious

Do you want to composite like a pro and perfect your artwork in Photoshop? 🔥

Here’s the process I use (and teach) that will bring your edits up to a professional standard...

1. Start simple: Cut out your images and build your scene. No effects, no blending modes yet — just composition.

2. Exposure first: Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on top and desaturate everything. Then, use Curves and/or Levels to balance light and dark areas across all the images so they match. You’re creating a level playing field here.

3. Then colour: Remove the desaturation layer and use Curves or Colour Balance to match the colour across your scene.

4. Add lighting and shadows: Use Curves or Exposure adjustment layers to brush in shadows based on your lighting. Make sure your light source and direction is consistent — flip or swap images if it’s not.

5. Now highlights: Same deal, but brushing in highlights instead.

6. Make it pop: For stronger highlights, add a Hue/Saturation adjustment, enable Colorize, pick a hue that fits your light source, boost the saturation/lightness, and softly brush in glow using 0% hardness and a 5–20% value for the Flow.

7. Edge highlights: Duplicate the previous step, increase Flow (50–100%) and brush in brighter edges where light hits reflective surfaces (e.g. metal). Optional: change blending mode to Color Dodge or Linear Dodge (Add).

8. Only after this should you move on to adding extra lighting effects, particles, brushes, etc.

These fundamental steps are the most important (and transformative) part of the process, and where most beginners go wrong! If your lighting, colour and exposure aren’t aligned — no amount of fancy effects will save the design ✌️

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