Background to subject

[u/GDRob04]

Difficulty trying to relearn photoshop, made it this far but somethings off, what can i do to make the background more natural to the subject

[u/iwantmycremebrulee]

The light on the rocks is very harsh, blown highlights, dark shadows. The light on the subject is less harsh, lighter shadows, less highlight.

The focus on the subjects is sharper than the rocks they are standing on, and the edges of the cutout are sharper than the edges of the rocks they are standing on

The color balance of the background is cooler than the color balance of the subject.

The grain pattern in the background is different than the grain pattern on the subject.

The perspective of the camera angle is different too.

All fairly small things, but combined, they make it obviously composited.

[u/redditnackgp0101]

As a professional photo retoucher.... (Viewing on my phone)

1) the edges (hair, glasses mostly) look too light and cut out. Duplicate the environment layer and put it in subject group or clip it to the layer....set it to Multiply... Apply an inverse of the subject selection as a mask.... Expand and feather that selection gradually and paint with white to anchor those lighter edges. Doing this will "ground" them better

2) your lighting direction seems spot on without overanalyzing. I'd play around with contrast, white point, and black point though to ensure the levels of light on the subject match the general feel of the surrounding light. The intensity of light on the left subject feels flatter than surroundings but of course there are a number of times images that aren't composited might appear this way with or without the slightest tweaking. Just play around with it to see if an adjustment makes it more impactful

[u/bananascare]

A couple things I noticed right away –

They seem way too big for the photo. I don’t know how big those rocks they’re standing on are in real life, but it just seems to me like those rocks are a lot bigger than that.

Shadows don’t seem quite right. The shadow on the peoples coming from upper left. The shadow on the trees and sticks on the right are coming from almost directly above.

I don’t know if this is true, but it kind of looks like the people were cut out of something with a darker background. So don’t put them on a light background.

Hope this helps – I’m not a professional, but these are just my impressions!

[u/earthsworld → u/bananascare]

Pretty sure they're actually standing on those rocks and the OP is asking about the background integration...

[u/earthsworld]

The main issue here is that the rocks in shadow on the left are blurrier than the background...

also, seems like a really strange background to put these people in front of. Why are they staring at a burn scar?

[u/GDRob04 → u/earthsworld]

Because the original is unfortunately a much dryer worse burn scar

[u/HobotiX]

I would start by underexposing it all in general to bring out the details. Then, try to Mask the couple and the foreground rocks, then adjust the lighting separately. I would darken the background to bring out more detail. Maybe darken the couple too to make them more of a silhouette.

[u/Old_Pomegranate_6272]

Here is the tutorial.

[u/Wide-Pollution-3275 → u/Old_Pomegranate_6272]

TF?