Photoshop at the Pro Level Part 2

Popular Photography enlisted master compositor and retoucher Robert Bowen to share his professional tricks of the trade for Photoshop image editing. Click here for the first installment of this Digital Toolbox Special.

You might think you recognize this composite from the cover of the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics, but it’s not quite the same. Bowen isn’t sure how such a similar image ended up on the book’s cover, since he executed this composite for a series of clients back in 2002. The apple and orange were first shot separately by photographer Steve Bronstein on a dark background, before Bowen decided the whole thing looked better on white. Master that he is, he switched out the background in Photoshop without having to go back to the photographer for a reshoot. Bowen tells us how he made his version.

Click through the slideshow to see how Bowen created this image in Photoshop.