composite

Creating a Composite Car Photo Using a Parking Lot Snapshot

A couple of days ago, photographer and retoucher Clint Davis shared a guest post about how he created composite photos for a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 4x4 brochure. Turkish photographer and retoucher Burak Erzincanli was also recently commissioned to create a composite with a Mercedes Sprinter.

This Amazing High-Res View of Pluto Was Made Using 26 New NASA Photos

Last week, NASA released a number of new close-up photos captured by its New Horizons spacecraft during its historic flyby of Pluto back in July. Many of the images showed the details of specific regions of Pluto's surface.

Photographer Daniel Machacek took 26 of those photos, combined them, and colorized them to create the amazing "global mosaic" of Pluto seen above.

Nope, Jeb Bush’s Head Wasn’t Photoshopped Onto a Black Man’s Body

Here's a humorous example of why you should pay attention to lighting when combining photos into a composite image. A few days ago, Jeb Bush's super PAC Right to Rise USA tweeted a picture that showed Bush with a stock photo of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the background. People immediately noticed that something was strange with Bush's left hand.

A Hummingbird Swarm Photo Shot with a Mirror and a Bird Feeder

This past weekend, New York-based photographer Brian Maffitt set up an angled mirror underneath his bird feeder and photographed hummingbirds for a few hours. Afterward, he combined a large number of the photos into this single, surreal composite photo showing ruby-throated hummingbirds swarming.

This Picture Shows 102 Kite Boarders in One Frame

Photographer Casey Mac created this wild image by shooting ~800 photos of kite boarders at California's Waddell Creek Beach and then blending the shots together in Photoshop. The photo is titled "Rush Hour." (Here's a larger version.)

5 Steps to Making a Magical Animal-Filled Forest with Photoshop

Before I get into the nitty gritty details of how this piece came together, I would just like you all to take a minute to appreciate how very talented Mackenzie Johnson is. (She is the model for this photo, and happens to be a YouTube-singer-songwriter in case you were unaware.) Not only did she do her own hair/makeup/wardrobe and model like boss, but she even actually played and sang for this photo.

Shooting a Portrait of a Man with a Cloud of Falling Lemons

Israeli photographer Ronen Goldman was recently commissioned by UK-based premium luggage manufacturer Redland London to shoot a series of advertising photos promoting an upcoming line of luggage. The company wanted to show the durability of the product and how it helps you "be prepared for anything," so Goldman created a photo of a man protecting himself from a cloud of falling lemons. The video above is a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how the image was created.

These Photos of Starling Murmurations Were Created with Plastic Bags

A murmuration of starlings is a beautiful sight to behold, as giant flocks of birds float through the air like a dark cloud with a mind of its own. French photographer Alain Delorme captured this beauty in his project Murmurations, but instead of birds and wildlife photography, Delorme's images were created through plastic bags and Photoshop.

Animated GIFs Showing the Photo Composite Work of Richard Roberts

Richard Roberts is a freelance creative retoucher and digital artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the past decade, he has worked on advertisements and promotional materials for clients that include Fox, HBO, Mountain Dew, Under Armor, Kelloggs, and Gillette.

For most of his projects, Roberts will capture snapshots of the image at various stages of compositing -- glimpses are later combined into animated GIFs that show how the various images were made.

Giant Fantasy Scenes Created by Photographing Kids on the Floor with Everyday Things

German photographer Jan von Holleben is known for creating imaginative scenes by having kids lie on the ground and carefully arranging everyday objects around them. One of his first viral projects that featured this style was "Dreams of Flying".

His latest one is the most ambitious and elaborate of them all. Titled "Konrad Wimmel is in Town," the series features gigantic scenes that took a year to create.

These Dreamlike Photo Manipulations Were Created Using Only an iPhone

By day, Robert Jahns is a digital artist and art director based in Germany. By night, he's known as nois7 on Instagram and runs a popular account boasting more than 600,000 followers. His stream of images consists of dreamlike photos that are often clearly the result of compositing, but there's one hidden fact that sets Jahns apart: his editing is done strictly on his phone.

How I Created This Viral Puddle Reflection Picture in Photoshop

My name is Michael Pistono, and I'm a 28-year-old photo enthusiast living in Honolulu, Hawaii. I was recently playing around with a reflection photo when I had the idea of creating another one out of a puddle -- one that featured both tall buildings and an airplane.

The photo I ended up creating in Photoshop (shown above) went viral online. Here's a look at how it was made.

This is What Photos of the Night Sky Would Look Like if the Andromeda Galaxy Were Brighter

What would the night sky look like if the closest spiral galaxy to us were as bright as the moon and visible in its entirety to the naked eye? The photo above offers a pretty accurate look (Click the image for a larger version).

Created by Tom Buckley-Houston, the composite image shows the Andromeda galaxy's actual size in the night sky with a huge boost in brightness.

BTS: Making Epic Advertising Composites with Erik Almas

Purists might not take to all of photographer Erik Almas' work, and in particular the work featured here, but if you can get over the fact that these are composites that necessarily need some help in the computer to come to life, Almas' advertising photography will blow your mind.

‘Average’ Web App Creates a Composite Image from a Flickr Set or Tag

We've run across some neat web apps in the past -- be it the Face to GIF app that lets you create animated GIFs with ease using your computer's webcam, or something a bit more practical like UT's enlarging and denoising app.

The 'Average' web app definitely falls on the less-practical side of things. It allows you to easily combine any number of Flickr photos from a set or tag into a composite average of them all.

Creating an Awesome Photo Manipulation from Sketch to Final Product

Swedish photographer and retouch artist Erik Johansson creates amazing photo manipulations -- in fact, we've actually featured his work before. This, however, is the first time we've had the opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at how these manipulations come together.

In the video above he gives us a glimpse at how he created the manipulation Drifting Away, all the way from the first sketch to the final 123-layer manipulation.

Time-Lapse: Creating an Impressive 284-Layer ‘Super Composite’

Photography purists might want to look away on this one. The above video is a 9 minute time-lapse that speeds up 7+ hours worth of Photoshop CC work. That work was spent creating an intense composite that wound up consisting of 284 layers before it was all said and done.

Photos of New York City Inside the Grand Canyon Contrast Emptiness and Density

At the end of 2012, Swiss photographer Gus Petro took a trip to the United States, and was met with a sharp dichotomy. When he visited New York City, he found density in all its glory. But when he followed that up with a trip to the Grand Canyon, he was struck by the sheer emptiness of it.

This led to a project dubbed Empty, Dense, Merge, and the photos below represent the final third of that triad.

Groopic Combines Multiple Group Shots So the Photographer is Never Left Out

You might have run into this problem before: you're out with a group of friends and someone suggests a group shot. At this point, as the resident photographer of the group, several smartphones will probably be passed your way, leading to several good photos, all of them missing you.

You could always ask a stranger to take the group photo, but the picture might not turn out right and you might prefer avoiding that interaction altogether. Thankfully, with Groopic, now you can.

Fourth of July Fireworks and Lightning Captured in One Lucky Shot

Some people have all the luck right? The above photo was taken by photographer Jason Smith, and it's a great example of the right place meeting the right time. While taking 4th of July photos at a friend's house, he was able to capture a lightning strike that synched perfectly with some fireworks.

These Hundred-Photo Composites Take Street Photography to the Next Level

At first glance, photographer Pelle Cass' series Selected People makes it seem like Boston is horribly overcrowded. The streets and squares are flooded with people, some of whom look like they're about to bump into each other without a second thought. And it's not just people, one tree seems to be the favorite spot of every single squirrel in the city.

Of course, once you realize what it is you're looking at, it starts to make a little more sense, because the photos in the series aren't made up of only one exposure, but hundreds of them.

This Zoomable Composite Aerial Photo of San Francisco is Like a 1938 Google Earth

What you see above is an ultra-high resolution aerial photograph of San Francisco as it looked in 1938. The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection put the image together using 164 large format black-and-white photos of SF that were shot in 1938. When viewed through a zoomable image viewer, the composite photo is pretty much a 1938 version of Google Earth's satellite view.