Week 6 Color Correcting, Adding Light & Depth (Matte Painting Study)

Matte Painting Study 

Week 6 Color Correcting, Adding Light & Depth

Color correcting is something that takes time to learn some people grasp it easily sometimes it takes longer for others. This requires having a good eye of on color.We want to color correct are piece well so that it blends with the other pieces. When I color correct i manly use the tool Curves. Curves can be difficult to learn and hard to understand. But when you get the hang of it I would advise using Curves. You can also use Hue/Saturation , Exposure and Color balance. These tools are pretty self enplaning and simple to use. Here is a photo sequence of me using the following steps. 

I save a PNG of Each step to my color correction. Its very hard to tell by looking at the two photos but there is a difference that you can tell when you toggle on and off the layers.

Here is were i start to add fog. This will create depth in your photo. I started at the furthest mountain and worked my way back. For the fog i added an new layer above the background and covered it with white. I then used the eraser tool and erased the parts i didn't want. Use the Opacity on your brush and on your layer to help get the effect you are looking for.

You can also add light rays using the same method!

This is the final result :)