[sarahraanan]

So, my client would like me to photograph her dentistry staff. Rather than a group photo, she would like to create a composite like this http://blog.zap2it.c...er-sort-of.html (just headshots, not full body)so that if someone leves or joins, they can be added in/taken out.
I am planning on giving the photoshop work to retouchup.com but what should i be taking in to account when taking the photos, in order to make the PS work afterwards as easy as possible?
Will be bringing a white vinyl background to shoot against but need to start thinking about other factors to take in to account.
Any advice would be so appreciated
thanks!
sarah

[Chris Fullmer]

Its best to have a good solid color background. Looks like they used white in that example. The movies use blue screens and greenscreens. It might not be a bad investment to purchase a good blusecreen, especially if you think you might be able to use it again. Try to avoid very hair wild/wispy that will be impossible to cut out. Those retouchup.com people will probably be very good at what they do, but you will get the best results if you avoid any thin, wispy, transparent hair-do's. Tell you client what color background you will use and ask their employees to not wear that same color. It would be less than ideal to show up with a greenscreen and find out the entire staff wears green scrubs and they start to blend into the background. Or if you use a white backdrop, it can be hard to clip around white clothes, especially if you've blown you're whites at all. Essentially they just need good clean lines to clip around. Transparent clothes and hair are difficult to work with.

I'm not sure how you get their eye lines to all end up looking at the imaginary camera though. That American Idol example only has 5 people. Will your job include more people? It might get trickier with larger amounts of people? Or maybe it gets easier. But its something to consider. Sounds like a cool job. I'd like to see examples of how it comes out in the end,

[Dave W]

You want to remember how your lighting was set up and repeat it in the future so that you don't light 9 people from 45 Degrees left and the 10th from 45 degrees right.