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Two things should happen when you look at Derek Lea’s photo composite. You should first absorb the composition as a
whole. Then your eyes should start to explore, noticing the color and
detail of the individual elements. Lea utilized the same masks and
blending modes to enhance images separately, then unify them.
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Lea copied and pasted a face image
on a layer, clicked the Add a mask icon
in the Layers palette, filled it black, and
painted with white to reveal only the
eyeglasses. He set the blending mode
to Overlay.
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He Command/Ctrl-clicked the eye
mask thumbnail to make a selection,
dragged a sky image into the main file on
a layer beneath the eye layer, and added
a mask to the sky layer. The sky appeared
only in the selection (the eyes). Lea
duplicated the sky layer and filled it with
black. He clicked the mask thumbnail and
painted with black to hide the selection
until he created shadows in the lens. He
reduced the layer Opacity and set the
blending mode to Multiply.
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Lea placed an apple photo on a layer
above a hat photo layer. To eliminate the
apple’s reflection, Lea selected a green
area, jumped it to a new layer over the
highlight, and set the blending mode
to Darken at 93% Opacity to replace the
highlight’s white pixels with green pixels.
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Lea added a mask to the apple layer
and painted with a soft black brush to
blend the apple into the hat. To enhance
the apple’s vibrancy, he Command/Ctrl-clicked
the apple layer, and created a
Levels adjustment layer to darken the
midtones and decrease the highlights to 250. He clicked the Levels mask
thumbnail and painted with black on the
hat to protect it from the adjustment. He
also created a Selective Color adjustment
layer from the apple layer. In the dialog
box, he decreased Black in the Neutrals
but increased Black in the Blacks, then
painted with black again to protect the
hat from the adjustment.
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Lea put a watercolor painting scan
on a layer and erased a shape of a figure
from the layer. He Command/Ctrl-clicked
the painting layer, dragged a sky image
into the main file on a layer above the
painting, and added a mask to the sky
layer which cut the figure shape from
it. He painted with a low-opacity black
brush to selectively reveal the painting
beneath. He applied the same technique
to an ocean image layer. For texture, he
made a selection of the sky layer mask,
added a layer, chose Edit > Stroke, and
applied a light blue 2-pixel stroke. He set
the layer blending mode to Color Dodge.
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On a camera image layer, Lea set the
blending mode to Overlay to darken the
camera’s shadows and lighten its highlights
through a red brick background.
To bring back contrast, he duplicated the
camera layer and set the blending mode
to Luminosity at 50% Opacity. This combined
the brightness and darkness values
of the camera with the Overlay layer.
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The final image is shown at left (click to enlarge).
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Toronto-based Derek Lea specializes in corporate, advertising, editorial and conceptual illustration.
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