When making your selects, you are going for the look that works with the project and background. By shooting multiple poses and angles it provides a great resource of photos to chose from.

Look over Joel's shoulder as he demonstrates all the settings and choices he makes as he runs the background captures through Photomatix Pro to create the final background image.

Starting with a portrait of Ashley, the soccer player, Joel takes us through his process for getting his signature grungy look.

Learn how to use the Quick Select and Refine Edge tools in Photoshop CS5 to make the job of extracting the subject from its original background a piece of cake.

Before dropping the subject into the scene, the background image needs to be run through the same grunging process that was done to the subject to help them work together.

A big part of "selling the fake" is taking steps to connect the subject to the background by creating and enhancing the atmosphere of the photo.

Dodging and burning is a great technique for evening out the tones in the model's face and bringing out her beauty.

Joel brings the final composite home with a few techniques to retouch the subject and burn in the shadows to add to the sense that she is really standing in the scene.