Honey, I shrunk the kid! | Photoshop Manipulations | Photo Forum

I actually was going to ask you if you could have a section for trick photography or photo manipulation. I just didn’t do it because its your forum and I didn’t want to cross the line as guest here. I love doing photoshop manipulations. I know a lot of people are all about natural and get it done right in the camera, when it comes to portraits or event photography I am the same way. I love doing this kind of photos because it lets me be creative and learn new things in both shooting photos and post production as well. I noticed when I just use to shoot portraits and stuff I really never payed attention to light as much as I do when I photograph for compositing because in order to make it look real the light and shadows have to look real as well. I wish I had more free time to do it tho.
I have a few more photos that I will post, I just didn’t want to post a lot at ones. Thank you

Ok here is a little break down of how I created this image. I didn’t want to explain it when I posted the image, so you guys can try and figure out on your own how it was done.
This all started with just trying some product photography. I got some foam boards at walmart set them up on the kitchen table for a backdrop, I used two speed lights through umbrellas to light them. I just wanted to photograph some mugs, cups and other stuff. After I imported the photos in to the Lightroom and did some editing I got this Idea. Photographing my daughter, I used just white backdrop like a bed sheet, lighting was exactly the same and I tried to use the same direction of light as well. The way I got her to hold the arms to pretend she is grabbing the edge of the cup was one of the hardest things in this photo. I had my wife and my other daughter hold a broom stick and had my little one grabbing the stick simulating the same thing she would do if this was a cup. After that I layered the two images in ps masked out the background and the broom stick. The area where part of her is visible through the glass of the cup is a separate layer with opacity at about 50%. The last thing is, I added the shadow behind her same direction the cup dropped shadow and also added the shadows underneath her arms on the edge of the cup. The thing I think that helped to sell the effect is that I put a tea spoon on the edge of the cup confirming that the cup was actually small. I hope this wasn’t confusing.