Colour Overlay

[neuromancer]

Hi All,

I wanted to ask if anyone knew more about how to apply photographic images over the compositional sketch when matte painting? I own the d'artiste matte painting book and dylan coles intro to landscape matte paintings, both of which refer to applying a photo with colour overlay mode... When I looked at screen captures of dylans tutorial for advanced matte painting he applies colour overlay mode through the blending and layer effects for a layer. Does anyone know how this works?

cheers

neuromancer

[NickATnitE]

In the tut in question dylan does indeed use the layer style colour overlay to add more sky colour to the layer. it helps to push back the buildings and objects he is adding.
the reason he uses the layer style instead of the blending mode is simplicity. it's easier to go in and tweek the layer style which affects many layers than to go in and mess with the opacity on 20 overlay layers.


however when bringing in new photo images to add to a comp make sure you do a curves adjustment to put the black and white levels in the right range for where you are placing it. Cristian scheuler does this a lot on his dvd's. ie if it's something going in the mid or background make sure its not too contrasty and that the blacks are not way more black than the surrounding area. this step will immediatley help your images sit in the space and anything you do after that will be bonus...

Good Luck
Nick Clark
http://student.vfs.com/~nicholasc/