Real World Compositing with Adobe Photoshop CS4

Adding Source Files

Smart placement. At this stage of the game, your original photos, stock art, 3D models, and other source materials should be ready for inclusion in a newly created compositing file. To start, we frequently take advantage of smart objects and the Place command (File > Place) in Photoshop. This technique allows you to choose your source files (even layered versions) and place them as smart object layers into the composite document. When you place a file into another document, your initial view is with transform (Scale) handles so you can adjust the layer’s longest dimension to fit within your composite. We zoom out before scaling the object, so the resize handles are fully visible (Figure 10.1).

Figure 10.1. Placing source ...