The wonderful world of Layers was the topic at hand for week 2 of The Art of Compositing. In addition to manipulating Layers, we blew some minds talking about Smart Objects. Smart Objects are a really fantastic way to maintain the integrity and editability of your elements as you create your own composites. Keep in mind that they are memory intensive. So if you only have 1 Gig of RAM and you are working on a 50 Layer, 30×40″, 300dpi image, it may be time to upgrade to that shiny new Mac. The second half of the class was spent on Blend Modes. Please take the time to go through these on some of your own photos so that you have a firm grasp of how they work. Next week, Layer Masks and Adjustment Layers…Sweet!

Someone (I don’t remember who) didn’t believe that the Annie Leibovitz photo below of Helen Mirren and Judi Dench was a composite.



Well, here’s the info, straight from Annie’s wonderful book At Work. “The picture of Hellen Mirren and Judi Dench in the car was made in two different places. It was fun directing Judi Dench to act like she was talking to someone who wasn’t actually there. She was saying, “You bitch. How could you have done this to me? Why did you do that to me?” And she had that look. If we had been using film, we would have to stitch two frames together, but since we were shooting digitally, we built the final picture in the computer.” I love Annie’s work. Say what you want, she’s an amazing artist.

LINKS
Erwin Olaf
Erik Johannson
Calvin Hollywood