0-0-0 - Toy Photography Behind the Scenes

0-0-0, toy photography.

Hello and welcome back to another behind the scenes toy photography video!

This week I'm going to show you how to blend two images into one with layer masking.

I call this shot: Triple Zero.

I'll also show you my editing process!

For this shot I used Triple Zero and Doctor Aphra from Hasbro's Star Wars the Black Series.

The Doctor Aphra comics, which follow the titular rogue archaeologist and her adventures with a pair of homicidal murder droids, are some of my very favourite Star Wars stories. The characters are so great that I didn't feel the need to make a complicated diorama for this shot, I just used a couple lights, a backdrop and some crystal beads.

After balancing the precious treasure in Aphra's arms and positioning 000 menacingly behind her, I placed a small cube light with a green gel underneath the crystals to illuminate the foreground. A carved up Styrofoam cooler and an LED panel light were all I needed for the background.

Here's my base image. Since the setup for this shot was so easy, I thought I'd take a bit more time this week to delve into the editing process. I took 2 separate exposures. My base image was a shot with Aphra's face in focus, and my other shot had the gems in focus.

Placing the face focused layer on the bottom, I put a layer mask on the top gem layer, and pressed “control I” to invert the layer mask, making the gem layer invisible. Then I selected the brush tool, made the colour white, and brushed directly onto the layer mask, bringing the focused gems back into existence. Editing layer masks with the brush tool is a great way to combine layers with different focus levels.

Normally, you'd be able to get both elements in focus, but I was using a magnifying filter on my camera for this shot. Magnifying filters sacrifice a deep depth of field in order to take extreme close ups. Without the magnifier, I would never have been able to position my lens so close to my toys.

When I was happy with the blend, I began my usual editing workflow. I added adjustment layers for levels and colour balance and cropped the edges of the shot.

Next I made a duplicate merge of my two original layers and made some touchups with the healing brush tool.

Using the lens correction menu, I added a custom vignette, then used the dodge and burn tools to fine tune the lighting on my subjects.

One of 000's many devices for inflicting pain is flamethrower on his left ring finger. Of course this is just a little plastic nub on the toy, so I removed it and used a custom brush too stamp in a flame. I added some inner glow and then blurred the layer to give it some motion.

After that, I imported these vector protocol droid eyes I made in Illustrator and used a variety of effects to massage them into the shot.

Lastly I added just a hint of glare to Aphras helmet next to the open flame on 000's hand.

So once again, here's my starting image. And here's where I ended up! Thank you so much for watching.

Music:
Necromancer Obediah (The Complete) by Solas Composer |    / @solascomposer  
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...