A Quick how-to on how to create great PopOut images. Great to help a product stand out, or to spice up some older photos.

An OOB Image STANDS out from its background with the help of a frame on a perspective plane cropping the background but leaving the foreground to appear as if its portruding out of or into the frame. 

To make one of these images you'll need to start out with an image that you can visualize a part of it sticking out of or into a frame. We'll start off with this photo I took of Richard Burrow from Full Size XJ Gear doing the first obstacle of Shredder Canyon in Southern California.

This photo lends itself well to this type of image because of the increased feel the tire up will make hanging out of the frame. The angles and shadows are also going to make this one fairly easy as well.

 

  

 

 

 

Start out by duplicating the Background layer to enable you to apply a layer mask in Photoshop. The layer mask is the second icon from the left on the bottom of the Layers Pallet. Highlight the layer you want to add a mask and click this icon. Your layers should look something like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Next step is to mask the background out that extends beyond the frame. Use the paintbrush, click on the image layer on the Image Mask to the right of the layer icon and start painting with the black brush. Clean up all the edges so your image appears like so.

I also create the "bg" layer with white, then black to see that my masking is working and I didn't miss any spots. Then I change the color of this layer to its final color, in this case, grey.

Now do the same masking for the Frame Layer... Paint black onto the areas of the frame you want "behind" the popped out background. This will give the appearance of your object actually popping out of the frame in 3D.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Add a dropshadow to the frame layer to separate the frame from the background and give it a nice look. Do this either with the built in Layer Styles, or by hand whichever you prefer. Use a soft brush @ 50% or so to paint shadows cast by the object onto the frame to give it depth.

  

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take care to mask out all areas that will show through and not look right once they are isolated from the background. In this case, the windshield and front window needed to have the background removed and replaced with a shade of blue to mimic the glass reflections. The transparency was dropped so the background color could influence it as well.

The Final Product