The Digital Matte Painting Handbook

The Summertime Plate

In Photoshop, open 683043.jpg from the Chapter 12 DVD materials. The photo of a rural country village will be the plate for this exercise.

Duplicate the Background layer, and rename the new layer BackgroundRev. Just as in the previous project, it will be useful to have a work area around the edge of the image. Press D on the keyboard to load the default black and white colors into the Color Picker. Choose Image ⇒ Canvas size, and add an extra inch around the sides. Command/Ctrl+click into the layer thumbnail for BackgroundRev to load the layer selection and invert it. Create a new layer called Mask at the top of the project, and fill the selection with black (Figure 12-1).

Figure 12-1: The plate with a one-inch mask all ...