Cutouts

"Bench". 10/29/10, 12:58 pm. Outside the Smith Building, BYU-Idaho Campus, Rexburg, Idaho. f/9. 1/200 sec. - Nikon D60. Edits are increasing the blacks and contrast in RAW.
To get this cutout, I brought the image into Photoshop, and created a new layer with a white marquee rectangle over the part of the image I wanted to cut out on top of the background layer. I then lowered the rectangles opacity so I could see through it, and using black paint I used a mask to paint back the parts of the image I wanted to keep. Once I was finishing bringing back the bench and rosebush, I increased the rectangles opacity again, and had a finished image.


"Honda". 10/23/10, 8:18 am. Barney Dairy Road, Sugar City, Idaho. f/10. 1/60 sec. - Nikon D60. Tripod. Changed the white balance in RAW.
To cut this image out, I opened the original in Photoshop, used the quick select tool to select the car and passenger. I then saved the quick selection because I knew I would use it again. I then refined the edge by adjusting the contrast, feather, and smoothness. I also added a small drop shadow. I then dragged the cut out Honda into a new document with the same dimensions and ppi.

From there I created a new layer below the Honda's layer, selected the cutout, and under the Edit menu selected Fill, and 50% gray. On that layer I used a blending mode of multiply, and copied the layer to make the pseudo shadow darker and more realistic looking. Next with both "shadow" layers selected I used the transform tool, and the warp transform tool to move the shadow to where I would expect it to be for the light levels on the rest of the car. Lastly I added a 10px Gaussian blur on the shadow layers, and then used the history brush to restore the crispness of the shadow near the tires.