choosing stock photos correctly

8/3/2019 Choosing Stock Photos Correctly

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a es user su m e u or a s

This is the rst tutorial of a miniseries of ar cles about photomanipula on techniques. In this series I will show you the en re

manipula on work ow and techniques with prac cal examples. I

want to make it clear that there are many ways of doing things with

Photoshop and I will show you mine. You can develop your own style

or adopt mine if you want.

The miniseries will have 6 parts:

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pulation Secrets 1 Choosing the Stock images http://www.psdbox.com/tutorials/the-secrets-of-photomanipulati...

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Part 1 Choosing the right stock images1.

Part 2 Color and contrast adjustments2.

Part 3 Shading and lights3.

Part 4 Dodge and Burning4.

Part 5 General adjustments & post edi ng5.

Part 6 Final produc on export6.

The order of this parts is not random, what I mean is that when I start

a new manipula on project I follow these steps. A er deciding which

kind of manipula on I want to make, rst I start looking for the

suitable stock images and follow the steps indicated above.

Choosing the right stock images for yourmanipulationsBefore star ng to look for stock images you must rst have a few basic

idea of what your nal work should look like, what style of

manipula on you will make, etc. You must also establish what will be

the dominant color(s) on your work. I took a few examples from

deviantArt to show you some examples. See how all of them have a

dominant color.

You can choose any color that you want, its irrelevant on the stock

search process. In other words, you can choose any stock image that

you like, as long as your stock images are not black and white. Even so,

you could colorize them but it would take you longer.

So, what you should start searching rst, the background, the model?

Actually it doesnt really ma er but you should denitely start from

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here. You dont want to start looking for small details, rst you need to

create a basic scene.

For example, if you nd a great model with a nice medieval dress, you

will then start looking for a background image that ts the ou it of the

model more or less.

Even at the beginning of the manipula on process you must take light

in considera on. In my case, the ligh ng of the background stock

image work as a guide when choosing the rest of the stock images. In

reality its quite hard to nd stock images that t perfectly but dont

worry you can create lights and shadows later. Just choose images that

match more or less.

For fantasy manipula ons, choosing stock images is not a very difficult

task, generally speaking but it also depends on how complex you want

to make your artwork.

Download mul ple images and than try combina ons. Just because of

stock image looks great, it doesnt mean it will look cool once you

combine it with another one in Photoshop. So, make sure you

download mul ple images and then open them in Photoshop and

make rough cuts and posi on them to see if they could t together.

Always try to work with higher resolu on images.

Where to look for Stock imagesThere are many websites that provide good stock images. I use to take

my stock images from deviantArt and sxc.hu but there are a lot of

other good sites. As you probably know, there are also paid stock sites,

some are more expensive like shu erstock and some are cheaper like

depositphotos. Anyways, you must give credit to the authors and

always make sure you read their rules, specially if you take them from

deviantArt.

Sites that offer stock imagesh p://www.shu erstock.com/

h p://depositphotos.com/

h p://www.sxc.hu/

h p://browse.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/

h p://www.stockvault.net/

h p://www.freepixels.com/

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This is what I do what I start a new project. I rst create a new folder

where I save all the stock images that I will download. Then, I start

browsing for the stock images that I consider would look nice together.

I always download a lot of images rst.

A er that I open a stock that I think could be a good background and

then I make combina ons with the other stocks to see which oneslook good together. Also dont hesitate to use the warp tool or distort

tools if something doesnt line up correctly.

A er I see which images could work together, I discard the other ones

and start working.

This was just an introduc on to this series but some of you maybe

nds it useful. On the second part I will talk about colors and how to

blend stock images using gradient maps and adjus ng the contrast

using a prac cal example.

Copyright secured by Digiprove 2010 Andrei Florin Oprinca

This entry was posted by Andrei Oprinca on November 12, 2010 at 11:09 pm,

and is led under Tutorials. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.

You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

I cant wait to see this miniseries because Im always

confused by how to blend in the stock photo with

everything else.

Im also very interested. Ive already learned a lot by

reading the examples, but now its me take ac on.

#1 wri en by Brandon

about 9 months ago

#2 wri en by Bert

about 9 months ago

#3 wri en by Andrei

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8 23/08/2011

choosing stock photos correctly

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