Basic compositing workflow

Now that we know what the act of composition is, and we have a handful of images to work with, it is time to look at the workflow differences between what we have done so far and the unique challenges of composition. So far, the only workflow we proposed (in Chapter 7) for standard single-image editing was as follows:

1. Crop the image to get the composition correct.
2. Adjust the levels for the image.
3. Adjust the focus to tell the story of what to look at.
4. Apply the color grade.
5. Balance and finish.

Now, we will get a bit more mature and increase the complexity of the workflow since we will be harvesting multiple images to create a unified image.

The composition workflow

I have included an example composition that I have done to illustrate these concepts (see the Composition breakdown file in the downloads for this chapter). However, in each step, I have broken down the image into layers so that you can see the image come together...