Combining Reality With A Rotoscope-Style Painting
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Written By Steve Patterson
In this Photoshop photo effects tutorial, we're going to look at how to easily combine reality with a rotoscope-style painting. "Rotoscoping" is the term used when artists paint or trace over live-action film, frame-by-frame, to create an animation, and it's being used in everything from tv commercials to Hollywood movies, most notably the recent Keanu Reeves movie "A Scanner Darkly".
We're not going to be creating an entire animated sequence here, but we are going to learn how to give a photo that same rotoscoped effect, and it's very easy to do. Rather than applying the effect to the entire image though, which we certainly could do if we wanted, we're only going to apply it to the main subject of the image, leaving everything else in the photo untouched so it looks like we're combining a painting with reality.
Here's the photo I'll be starting with:
And here's the image after applying the rotoscope painting effect to the main subject (the two people) while leaving the wall, the sidewalk and whatever it is he's holding in his hand untouched:
Let's get started.
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Step 1: Select The Main Subject Of Your Photo
Since we're only going to be applying the effect to the main subject of the image, the first thing we need to do is isolate it from the rest of the photo, which means we're going to need to select it. In my case here, I want to apply the effect only to the two people sitting on the sidewalk, so I'm going to select them. You can use any selection tool you're most comfortable with to select your subject. I'll use the Pen Tool, but the Lasso tool would also work just fine. Go ahead and select your main subject:
Notice that I've selected around whatever it is the guy is holding in his hand, since I don't want the painting effect to be applied to it.
Step 2: Copy The Selection To A New Layer
With the main subject selected, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to copy the selection onto a new layer above the Background layer. You won't see anything happen in your document window, but if you look in your Layers palette, you'll see that your selection has been copied to a new layer which Photoshop has automatically named "Layer 1":
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