Miss Behaving: Makeshift Floor

I wanted to make a quick tutorial today and ended up being a bit wordy. Big shock, right? Heh

Scenario: You’ve spent a lot of time and effort extracting your model and have a gorgeous background you want to use with your layout, but when you put your model on the paper … it’s just … there.

 

Before:

 

Today I’m going to show you how to make a “faux floor” to put your extracted photo on.

After:

 

I’m going to keep it simple. Just paper and model so you can see the process. (Plus I’m working on a different LO using this same technique and haven’t finished yet. LOL)

I’m using Flerg’s Dreamcatcher background here.

Add a new layer (circled in red)

Go to your Gradient Tool:

We want to use a color we find in the paper so click on the gradient bar to change the color:

Click on the “stop” button (#1) to bring up the color. Then click on the color square to change the color:

Click on the darkest portion of your background paper then make it a few shades darker:

Click OK, then click on the “stop” button (circled in red) to change the opacity to 0% which will make it transparent:

Start in the top right hand corner. Left Click on this spot and keep your finger on the left click button and drag it down to the bottom left hand corner. *Note: if you take your finger off of the left click button, the gradient will end there.*

I want my gradient to be a bit larger. “Ctrl + T” will bring up Free Transform. As you can see below, I’ve dragged the gradient down quite a bit.

Change the Blend Mode to “Linear Burn” and change the Opacity to 50%.

Add a new layer. I am now going to add a white gradient, so click on the gradient bar to change the color:

Click on the “stop” button (#1) to bring up the color. Then click on the color square to change the color:

Change the color to White (#ffffff):

This time, start in the bottom left hand corner and drag it to the top right hand corner:

Keep the Blend Mode @ Normal and change the Opacity to 50%

Now we’re going to build our “faux floor”. Add a new layer. Go to your Rectangular Marquee Tool:

Mark off the bottom portion of your page:

Go to your Flood Fill Tool:

Use the same color you did for your dark gradient (or close to it).

We want to blend your rectangle into the page so, “Ctrl + D” to Deselect your rectangle. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

These are the settings I used:

Let’s blend it in a little bit. We’re going to mask the blurry rectangle and paint it using a low opacity brush. Hit “Ctrl + Enter” to select your blurry rectangle, then click on the “Add a layer mask” button (circled in red):

Use the Paint Brush Tool:

Set your foreground color to black:

These are the settings I used:

Basically I just swiped diagonally across the blurry rectangle twice in broad strokes. Starting from the blottom left hand corner of the blurry rectangle and tapering off when reaching the top right hand corner.

Now I’m going to put my model on the page:

She needs SHADOWS! You all know I love my shadows. Heh “Ctrl + Enter” to select your model. Add a new layer. Go to your gradient tool again.

I changed the color of the gradient, going from black to transparent. I left clicked on the bottom of my model’s shoes and drug (dragged ??) it to the top of the model’s head.

Here’s what it looks like:

“Ctrl + D” to deselect your model. To make the shadow believable, it must be distorted and blurred to look more natural. “Ctrl + T” to Free Transform. Hold the left click button down and choose a corner to distort individual portions. I left the right hand side of the shadow untouched and manipulated the left side. Here is how I transformed my shadow:

I applied a Gaussian blur to the shadow using the same settings as above. Change the Blend Mode to “Multiply” and lower the Opacity to 50%.

Before:

After: