Step-by-step Guide To Creating Stunning Before-and-after Photo Edits In Photoshop – A few weeks ago, I shared an Instagram story of a composite photo of 1, 2, 3, 4… 7 Lucys! I printed and framed my picture with Framebridge and now we hang it prominently in the kitchen. It made us smile as we walked by and I’m glad we took the time to perfect it from photo session to finish.
When I first shared this photo with you, I asked if you wanted a long blog tutorial on how to do it, and you overwhelmingly voted.
Step-by-step Guide To Creating Stunning Before-and-after Photo Edits In Photoshop
Other than The Great Wallpaper Debate, I can’t remember the last time we had such an enthusiastic response. Thank you! This photo of Lucy in the second apartment is our way of celebrating our next big project, while also capturing our beautiful girl in the moment. It’s beautiful and whimsical, just as we love our art.
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I’ll be completely honest and start this guide off by saying that I’m particularly weak when it comes to giving photography advice. As a background, I have a degree in photography and even today taking photos and capturing memories is one of my favorite ways to spend my time. I live with a DSLR camera attached to my right hand. You’d think this would give me the confidence to share editing tips, but here I am showing my age: My fourth degree just happened.
. Photoshop was in its infancy – I only took one course my senior year, and we were using version 5.0(!) long before the days of Photoshop CC. To be honest, I learned photography through the manual settings of my mother’s old camera and watched the magic happen before my eyes with drops of water and the smell of medicine. (
, my heart!) So, although photography is a frequently requested subject (and I intend to do a crash course on some of it – I, I, will soon!), when it comes to the technical details, I’ve mostly ‘learned’ myself over the past 15 years – hence my risk.
There are many ways to create a composite photo, some more complicated than others, some easier and some inconvenient (I’m looking at you, PhotoMerge!). All this to say, I will share what works for me! In this article, I break down – in the simplest way possible – how
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I knew I had to do it in a two story wallpapered bedroom with blue trim, gauzy curtains and yellow walls. We dressed Lucy simply, in a white jumpsuit, pink leggings and silver shoes. As soon as he reached the flat, he ran to the room, set the camera and tripod and framed the photos.
Hint: Look at the lines on the wall. Are they misconfigured? Raise or lower the tripod to get the straightest lines possible. ‘Sort it!’
While I like what I see through the viewfinder, I manually adjust the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed (my personal preference, but feel free to use your camera’s automatic settings). Next, I clamped the tripod down so it wouldn’t move – lo and behold
An important final preparation step is to take a photo of the room without Lucy, analyze the scene, and make final adjustments.
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Here comes the fun part! It would be helpful to have at least one person involved in this matter. In our case, Scott was in most of the photos so Lucy had someone to run, laugh and play with! For example, Scott asked Lucy.
Shoot, shoot, shoot! He was careful not to touch her, which helped in the editing process. Knowing that time is limited with a toddler, I took about 100 photos of Lucy in 15 minutes.
That’s the hard part! I whittled it down to my top 10, and to make things easy for myself, I carefully chose lucys that didn’t overlap.
Optional: First, I used Lightroom to sync all the levels and correct the distortions from my wide angle lens. I then export those files and bring the final selections into Photoshop to begin the layering process!
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(Ha!) Out the window as a background/base layer for my project, because this Lucy is in the distance. Finally, I did my best because all the other Lucys were scattered in this image. On each of Lucy’s photos, I used my Quick Selection Tool (which looks like a paintbrush with a circle with lines) to select the shape of her body. If there’s a shadow below her or if she’s touching something (like a doorknob) I also pick it up.
When you click on the subject, Photoshop does most of the work for you by selecting the closest hard border. After selecting Lucy, I chose ‘select and create mask’ from the submenu.
When you click ‘Select and Create Mask’, a list of options will pop up on the side. I always blur my selection by a few pixels and change the edge by about 10% (to avoid hard lines) and click ‘OK’.
Next, I copied Lucy from the photos (Command + C) and pasted her to the background layer (Shift + Command + V). I did this for all my Lucys until I had a layer for all 7 of my girls, and I renamed each layer so my brain figured it out.
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Tip: Holding down the ‘Shift’ key while pasting a layer ensures that it is pasted exactly where it was cut.
This part can be boring, but the little details make a composite photo seamless! At this point, I’ll go through each layer and use my eraser tool and the ‘move’ tool to remove the excess background.
To the layers that Lucy had on, I added a motion blur effect (Filter > Blur > Motion Blur) which was very helpful to hide the perfect edges when she overlapped my Lucy corners! There is no right or wrong way to do this. Experiment with the blur settings until you like what you see (make sure ‘Preview’ is selected).
Now that you have your composite photo, be sure to save your Photoshop file as a .PSD! You ever
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If you want to go back and make changes, the Photoshop file stores all the layers for you. Keep this file in a safe place.
After I save the .PSD and I’m happy with the combined image, I want to combine all my layers (Layers > Flatten Image) before doing any further editing. In this way, the changes made in the future – brightness, saturation, etc. – Affects the entire compressed image instead of an individual layer.
Layer (or ‘background’ below) and this new compressed image will be saved as a .JPG. That step is important because you don’t want to keep editing and accidentally save your compressed image as a .PSD and lose your layers. (I’m not speaking from experience.
At this point, you’re technically done! But if you’re like me, you’ll want to edit your rad composite image on it
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! In my .JPG file, I edited out the gray background and some stray strands of Lucy’s hair. I also have a few favorite Photoshop actions that I like to use, and I layered a few until I was happy with the hot pink that is currently hanging on our wall. If you are new to Photoshop actions, you will find it very interesting! There are many available, and Etsy is a great place to start.
I tried several editing techniques and saved them all separately. If you’re undecided about the final edit, it’s best to save your JPG with a different file name (eg Lucy-composite-1.jpg, Lucy-composite-2.jpg) for each edit type. But whatever you do, keep that precious Photoshop file with all its layers! Once my photo was complete, I chose to print it and frame it with Irwin Slim via Framebridge (I’m always impressed with their print quality!), but here are a few other options:
The idea for this composite photo came from years ago when I did a similar project with my younger brother, Josh! When he was 4 (15 years ago, that’s crazy) I did all of the above at my grandparents house. They had a spare bedroom with vintage comforters on a pair of twin beds
Wallpaper (and yellow – I think my subconscious had something to do with the two flats I chose!). I want to remember that room—and my little brother—as well. What you don’t see is squats
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