Sometimes I amuse myself how I take my bed shoots to a whole new level. The white bed seems to be my favorite canvas. When a model can just play on the bed, my mind starts to play with ideas. Here is a little more in depth look at the process. This method of composite is exactly how movie special effects are done. Think “300″ the movie where everything was shot on a green screen. Even evening scenes are taken at normal lighting and later adjusted digitally. The advantage of shooting in normal lighting is being able to focus and being able to control with accuracy the lighting in post processing.

Naughty poses are fun. Bad kitty, bad!

Royalty free stock images can be found online. Here I create a mask for the model.

Another stock image of a tree trunk with same mask copied.

Foliage image resampled many times for layered effect. Add depth by adding blur to different layers.

Foreground layer blurred even more.

All the layers combined with desaturation and curves applied. Notice I also blurred the background for greater focus on the mode, as well as added a highlight to her right side.

Three layers here. One layer with dust speckles. One layer with lens flare. One layer with a few areas of white with zoom motion blur applied about 20 times.

The final image with more lighting and color adjustments, added a soft texture to the whole image, and added scratches to the bark.

Download the long version of the Bad Kitty Photoshop video here! Make sure you use Quicktime player to watch, as you can use the left and right arrow keys to scan frame by frame to better understand the video. It’s at 130% original speed at 15 fps.

Just in time for the costume holiday. Here’s a 49 minute edit compressed to 9 minutes. The trick to a fast edit is memorizing pretty much all of the shortcuts in an application. The 1.5 seconds it takes to move the mouse to and back from a toolbar, times a few hundred throughout an editing session can mean saving lots of minutes.