The event was held on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM.

Photoshop Compositing by Charles Ginsburgh

This is an 8 session (16 week) Study Group in compositing within Photoshop. This Study Group is designed to further our experience with, and our skill in, creating composites within Photoshop (and for the most part Photoshop Elements). These sessions are held virtually via ZOOM.  Dates are every other Wednesday starting on Feb 15th then every other week

We do not discuss the use of Lightroom in this setting, as this application is not conducive to the creation of composites.

The goal here was not to make ourselves into advanced Photoshop Composite Artists, but to:

• Become more familiar with Photoshop editing
• Become more aware as to the concepts and subtle aspect of within our images that impact how we perceive them
• Become better composite creators
• Discover ways how composites might help our everyday Photography
• Challenge our imagination and creativity

At the completion of these sessions, students are much more comfortable with Photoshop editing, are more willing to try out some of the options Photoshop has to offer, and have a greater appreciation of the subtle aspects of our images that impact the viewer. Students also become much more aware as to how even the most simple composites can enhance our everyday photography.

This Study Group includes:

• General Compositing Tutorial Videos and technical materials (technical notes and practice images)
• Access to compositing tutorials demonstrating the execution of several different independent projects 
• Assigned Projects. Both the project concepts and all starting materials will be provided.

This study group is not intended to be a passive event, but an active “hands-on” series of sessions where students are required to complete, share and comment upon project assignments. Students failing to consistently do so are respectively asked to leave the group. The bulk of the “hands on” training will be in completing the assigned projects, and that is where most of the group’s time will be spent. Projects start simple, and advance in complexity and skill level. 

Some of the specific topics that these projects highlight include:

• Selection techniques in Photoshop, and the use of Layers and Masks
• The visualization and application of directional light
• The generation and use of shadows 
• Color grading (it’s importance and application)
• Simple use of Photoshop brushes
• Element interaction
• Getting elements to fit in (what works and what doesn’t)

Individuals should be able to navigate around Photoshop and should have at least a basic understanding of Layers, Masks and Selections. Knowing what adjustment layers are, will also be a plus as well. You don’t need to be a master or totally proficient. Your will improve in time.  

The real power of Photoshop is in the use of Layers, Masks and Selections, and we will be using these elements extensively with our composites.  Even with the expanded masking capability, Lightroom is not the right tool to do the kind of things that we will be doing. Elements, has the ability to do this (and will work), but not as easily or as well as Photoshop.  If individuals use other layers-based editing applications (On-one or Affinity) these applications will work as well. In my experience these applications have many of the same tools and capabilities, although since I don’t use them much (if at all) I might not be able to aid you in how to do similar things in those applications.  All of my instruction will be using Photoshop.  

Photoshop is a beast, and in my instruction, I try to stick to using but a few of the tools in my examples. Often there are many PS tools that allow one to do a similar thing, but I try to stick to showing one or two (rather than the full PS collection of tools) in my instruction. I what you to be willing to try things in Photoshop, not to feel as though you need to master everything.

In our first session, we will talk about selections (you only need to use one of five tools to do 95 % of your selections), and how I use masks and layers to aid in making my selections.