You’ve probably been there. You’re shooting an event, running around all over, trying to capture anyone and everyone, taking advantage of any impromptu group poses when you happen upon them, not really sure what you have or don’t have. Everything happens in a whirlwind, and you’re observing it all through this tiny portal on the back of your camera, and whatever shows up in your peripheral vision.

You finally get a little time to import your shots off the card, sit back and go through them, and then you see it… two great shots of two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time.

There’s just one problem—neither of the two shots works. One of the two people looks great in one shot, and the other looks great in the other.

Nowhere else in your pile is there a shot of these two particular subjects together, so now you’re stuck having to either deliver these as they are or trashing them.

But wait! Don’t give up yet! You can combine them into one great shot simply and quickly using Adobe Photoshop CS4 to create what’s known as a composite.

Here’s how:

Open both photos as layers in Photoshop, or combine them as layers after opening them. If you need to fix color and tonality in Lightroom or Camera RAW, do that first. (Tip: In Lightroom, you can select both, right-click and choose “Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop…“.)

The next step is to make sure the two photos are aligned, so that all the static elements (trees, walls, etc.) line up exactly. Start by selecting both layers.

From the Edit menu “Auto-Align Layers…”.

When the Auto-Align Layers dialog box comes up, simply choose the default, which should be “Auto”, and click “OK”.

When it’s done, go to the top layer and add a layer mask. Remember—black conceals, white reveals. You want a white one, which “reveals” all of the top layer.

Set your foreground color to black and grab the Brush Tool with a soft edge, and the Opacity and Flow both set to 100%.

Start painting over the subject with the bad pose to reveal the good one in the layer underneath.

As you get into critical areas, zoom in and decrease the size of the brush for better accuracy. Take your time.

To make sure you haven’t missed anything, take a look at the mask. All the areas you want to hide should be black. If you have any white spots, check where they are in the image and paint over them if they should be hidden.

Last step is to crop and save. There you have it.

Tip: For this to work more effectively and save you time, don’t stop down the aperture too much when you’re shooting. In fact, keep it as wide open as you can unless you have a reason not to.

By keep the depth of field fairly shallow, more of the background is blurred, and you don’t have to do as much painting on the mask to blend elements together.

So, parting thought… is this cheating? I guess it’s a matter of opinion. You did have two shots with great poses of each person, just not together. In the scheme of things, that’s pretty tame in the cheating department.

About a month ago, I read a post by Thomas Hawk about his workflow, which inspired a friend of mine to blog about his own, so I started thinking about how mine has changed radically in the last few years.

The catalyst for this change is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Prior to Lightroom, my workflow consisted of:

1. Downloading my images from the cards using Downloader Pro, which allows excellent control over tags and other IPTC data, including convenient presets.
2. Using Photo Mechanic to do my initial triage, find my winners and losers, adjust tags and metadata as necessary and decide my editing strategy. (This is still the fastest photo browser I’ve ever used, even though it doesn’t come anywhere near Adobe Bridge in functionality.)
3. Using Nikon Capture NX to do my initial color and tonality work. (At the time, there was some debate about whether you could trust Camera RAW to do the right thing with respect to Nikon’s proprietary white balance, which had to be reverse engineered. Having spent a prior career in the computer industry, I knew what “reverse engineering” meant, no offense to the most excellent Adobe Photoshop engineering team, without whose product I would be nowhere.)
4. Using Adoble Photoshop to continue editing and produce the finished images in PSD format.
5. Exporting the images as JPEGs, in high and low resolution (yes, two sets), so I have “finished” versions I can show the world or deliver to clients.
6. Managing all these files manually—the initial RAW files in folders according to category, place, etc., and the corresponding PSD files and JPEG files with matching filenames, in matching folder structures. So, for example, image1.nef would have a matching image1.psd and two matching image1.jpg files in separate, identical folder trees.
7. Backing up the shoot.

Thinking back, I wonder how I ever delivered anything without getting mired in my own processes, and how I ever kept track of the images without losing any of them.

All of that changed when Adobe Photoshop Lightroom arrived. It took a while to break out of the little box that I’d made for myself and think differently about how to manage my files and workflow, but once I got it, I never looked back.

In contrast with the above, my workflow today consists of:

1. Importing my images from the card after creating or editing metadata and filename presets to match the shoot.
2. Taking a first pass through all of them and flagging all the completely useless ones (out of focus, misfires, serious motion blur, etc.) as Rejects, then hiding them using the Attributes function, so I don’t have to keep looking at them.
3. Taking a second pass to flag my edit candidates as Picks, making heavy use of the Compare View and Survey View as I need to, and flagging more Rejects as necessary. (I’ll often leave images as unflagged if I can’t decide or think I might find a use for them later.)
4. Develop the Picks in the Develop module, going from there into Photoshop as needed (for masks, brushes, etc.—things Lightroom can’t do yet).
5. Creating virtual copies to enable me to try different editing approaches and styles.
6. Creating Collections as necessary as I go along.
7. Taking a last pass through the images flagged as Picks or unflagged to see if I’ve missed anything.
8. Exporting the Picks as necessary to display or deliver to the client.
9. Backing up the shoot (before throwing away the Rejects—you just never know).

It seems like more steps, but once you get into the Lightroom philosophy, it’s a much more natural and sensible workflow. Once I got used to doing it this way and adopted it fully, my production times were cut in about half.

For me, the benefits of a Lightroom workflow are:

1. Far superior editing capabilities between Lightroom and Photoshop than I ever had with Capture NX or Photoshop alone
2. Freedom from having to manage all those files manually
3. Not having to take up disk space with a collection of matching “finished” JPEGs. I simply export finished files in whatever format I need, whenever I need them.
4. The ability to go back and try different ideas on a photo without taking up disk space with multiple copies, since all the edits are recorded in the catalogs.

A few caveats:

1. I do not convert my RAW files to the Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) file format. I’ve heard all the arguments in favor of doing this and none of them are compelling enough for me to incorporate the extra step… yet. (Now, if the Lightroom developers ever announced that they will no longer support one of my RAW formats, that would be compelling enough.)
2. I have Lightroom set to write all my changes to XMP sidecar files, so that I have the freedom to use other programs to work with the files if necessary. For this reason, I have Camera RAW set to use its own database rather than disturbing the sidecar files, so I don’t inadvertently mess up any delicate edits when I’m in there (which is rare).
3. When I first converted my old manual file management system to Lightroom, I took the time to rename all my finished PSD files to conform to the “-edit” format Lightroom uses, just to be consistent, and then I manually stacked them with the original RAW files, as I would with any new files today.

I’d be interested in hearing about your workflows. We develop them to suit our own capabilities and styles, but it’s always good to get a different perspective.