CreativeStable

We've all seen them, those poorly done stallion ads where there is a horse floating on a nice backdrop... often with their feet erased off or places on their bodies that are randomely blurred... and let's not forget the terrible cutout jobs. This seems especially prevalent with Quarterhorse stallion ads for some reason.

In this tutorial I am going to go over how to create a quick, simple composite for use in an advertisement.

Step 1

Find two images. One of a horse and one of a background that you would like to use. For this tutorial I am going to use this stallion image and this background.

Open the horse image in photoshop and select the pen tool.

Make sure "paths" and "add to path area" are selected along the horizontal toolbar

Now, outline the horse using the pen tool. If you click and drag you will create a curved corner. If you simply click you will create a sharp corner. Make sure to close the path.

Handy hints: While clicking and dragging with the pen tool, try holding down alt. This will allow you to change the length and direction of the handle. Handy when you are working with sharp corners.

Now go to your paths palette. It is usually in the same panel as your layers, but if you can't find it go to window > paths. Here you will see the path you created with the pen tool.

Hold down ctrl and click on the path's thumbnail (highlighted in red in the image below.) This will make our path into a selection.

Now go to Select > modify > contract and put in 1px. Then go Select > modify > feather and enter 1px. Some versions of photoshop may have the feather option just under  "select", not modify.

Step 2

Open up our background image in photoshop. Have the two images open, and with the move tool drag the horse image onto our background image.

You will notice that our horse image is much too large. Right click the horse layer in the layer palette and select "convert to smart object". This is not necessary, but can sometimes speed up workflow in the long run if you need to resize the image.

Hit ctrl+t and while holding down shift, scale the horse down until it looks proportional to the background. Hit enter to apply the changes.

Step 3

Not bad, but still does not look very realistic. We need some shadows and the grass around the hooves do not match.

Create a new layer above the horse layer and select the clone tool (make sure sample all layers is selected). Grab a paint brush that is shaped like grass and make it the size of the blades of grass around the horse's feet. Hold down alt and sample some grass and then using your mouse paint some grass over the hooves to make it look more natural.

Create another new layer above all the other layers, and again... use the clone tool around the tail to make it blend in. I suggest using a spatter brush.

If you are finding that there are some parts on the horse that you missed while cutting out, don't worry. That is what we are doing next. Select the horse layer and then hit the "layer mask" button on the bottom of the palette.

Make sure your foreground color is set to black and your background color is set to white. Select a small round brush and then paint away any unwanted parts. A layer mask acts like the eraser, except you aren't actually deleting your image... you are just hiding it. If you want to paint the image back on, simple change the foreground color to white and the background color to black.

Now we need to add some very sutble shadows. In my opinion, very little shadow tends to look better than too much... so take it easy on this part.

Step 4

Create a new layer above all the other layers and with a dark brown/grey color, paint a shadow like blob beneath the horse. Set the blend mode to Linear Burn and lower the opacity a bunch.

In conclusion

Some things to keep in mind:

• Lighting on the horse image should match that of the background.
• Colors of the horse should match that of the background (ie, a picture taken at night time will not match a picture taken in the day time.)
• Perspective must match in both photos.
• Feel free to play with colors, textures and fonts afterwards to really make it stand out.