Atlas

[Helicity]

This was my first photo shopping type of trial and error. I have learned a lot from doing this.

I will start out by telling you a bit about the photo. I was doing a black background type photo shoot. I don't have a background so I put up a black sheet and tried to cover the subject as best I could. I had him hold a yoga ball in the pose of atlas.

I started by making a 12 x 12 inch 300 dpi new photo shop doc. I placed the photo as a new layer. I know I cut out a bit of his leg so I placed it so he was down enough so you wouldn't notice. I used a quick mask with a solid circle brush and moved the slider till I found one that matched the ball. It covered some of his head and all of his arm so I then used the eraser and captured it so only the ball was masked. I took the mask off and deleted the selection from the layer.

I was now left with a picture with him holding up a blank spot. I went to the image layer and blacked out the edges around him. I filled the background layer black and brushed black over what areas were left on the image.

I found a stock image of the earth and used a mask like above to select just the earth. I added it as a new layer and played with the positioning until the spot looked good.

I burned the image to add a shadow on his hands and desaturated the subject.

I then played with the selective color to make sure the black was uniform and made the blues and greens of the earth pop a bit more.

I tried to add some stars but I think the pure black background looked better.

So this is my first attempt at photo shop and I only have basic skills but I think I did well. I can only go up from here.

Some things I would do for next time.

1) I would take a better photo with the subject being very clean and clear holding the ball.
2) I think he kinda looks unnatural holding it. I would ask him to think of it actually being heavy and maybe that would make it look like he is struggling
3) I would add a bit more shadows to make it look like his hands are actually gripping the earth.

[StephenJay]

nice creativity, but the angle is not really eye catching. I think u need to play around with the angles for the shot to really stand out. Nice attempt though.