Step 16: Building a Background - Indoor

In addition to creating a background, we can insert a picture of a building or an outdoor area and then work with our Dogman to integrate him into a scene. And it just so happens that we will work with both of these types of images - an indoor picture and an outdoor picture. For the indoor photo, we simply have to insert Catgirl and do some quick editing to make him look good. For the outdoor version, we will need to make a few more adjustments, but we'll worry about that in the next step.

Let's get Catgirl put into an indoor scene...

1. Open your Cartoon.psd file in Photoshop
2. Open the Indoor.psd file located in your Background folder

We first have to mash all the layers of our character down to one layer that we can copy him into the Indoor file.

3. In Cartoon, make the following layers visible: Ink, Highlight, Shade, Soft Color, and Color (they should be in this order from top to bottom; if they are not take the time now to put them in the correct order - our scene will not look good if the layers are out of order)
4. Click Layer then click Merge Visible (one of the visible layers above must be selected before you can merge your layers)
5. All of the layers should now be in one layer, which should be named Ink as that was the top layer before you merged them (or it should have been the top layer...if you totally ignored the directions in direction 3 then undo the merge now and put your layers in the correct order [the order on direction 3 above is correct] then redo the merge...and from now on follow the directions...if you did it correctly the first time, way to go!)

Now that we have him in one layer, we can move him into our background...

6. Select the Move Tool (it looks like this: )
7. Arrange the files so that you can see both Cartoon and the Indoor file
8. In the Cartoon file make the Ink layer active
9. Click anywhere on your Catgirl and drag her over to the Indoor file - your cursor should look like this: when you get on the Indoor file
10. Release the mouse to add Catgirl to the Indoor image

Notice that Photoshop added a layer to place your character on, and named it Ink, as that is what it was called in the Cartoon file. One slight problem exists though, he is the wrong size. We need to adjust him so that he fits well into the scene...

11. Be sure you are working with the Indoor file, and that you have the Ink layer selected
12. Click Edit and point at Transform then click Scale
13. You should now see a box around your Catgirl with small boxes at each corner and in the center of each side; these boxes are called resize handles and we can, if we wish, use them to resize our character, but we don't want to mess with these right now as we already know what size she needs to be, (well, I know...you'll know in a minute...) so we can just use the scale properties to adjust her
14. Look at the Scale properties bar, it should look similar to the graphic below...
    
15. Notice the chain link in the above graphic that is between the width percentage (the W with 100.0%) and the height percentage (the H with 100.0%) that the red arrow is pointing at; click the chain link so that it is active as in the above graphic - this will allow us to change either the height or width and have the other change automatically
16. Click in the W box and highlight the 100.0% and type in 60
17. Notice that as you type 60 that your character will resize himself, and that the H box will change automatically
18. Click the Move Tool
19. Photoshop will ask: Apply the transformation? - select Apply (Photoshop is making sure you really want to change him)
20. Catgirl is now the correct size, but is most likely in the wrong place; click and drag her so that she is standing next to one of the closer tables(take a look at the graphic below to see where to place him)

He is in place, but we need to add in a shadow. If you look at the left side of the pool you will see a flowerpot looking thing on top of a column. Now look at the ground just to the right of that - see that shadow (if not, take a look at the graphic below...)?

That will give you an idea what direction the light is coming from. We can use this knowledge to create an accurate shadow using the airbrush tool.

20. Use the Airbrush tool to create a shadow (do it similar to the way you did it in Step 14)

We are now done working with the Cartoon file, so let's go ahead and close it. Remember, we DO NOT want to save the changes we have made to this file - if we do we will not be able to complete the steps that follow.

21. Close the Cartoon file and when Photoshop asks if you want to save it click No

You should still have the Indoor file open. You will need to save this as a separate file so it can be graded and you can return to your original Cartoon file and create the next background...

22. Click File
23. Click Close
24. Photoshop will ask Save changes to the Adobe Photoshop document "Indoor.psd" before closing?
25. Click Yes (yes, you will be saving over the original Indoor file you opened at the start of this step, but that is OK because we do not need to use it for anything else)
26. Photoshop should close the Indoor file
27. Remember NOT to work with this file in the future - it should be left with the indoor background - when you move on to Step 17 you will need to open the Cartoon file back up and continue working with it

Now move on to the next step...