Hey guys, can I have some help?

My Mum made costumes for all her grandkids before Christmas but naturally, trying to get 7 kids to pose together is impossible.

So I'm trying to put together an image with all the kids that looks decent.

This is what I have so far:



Each child is a separate photo, plus the background, hay & lamb are from the web.
The Manger is made from the background as the baby was in a strange looking basket.

It prints out wonderfully at A3 size, (30cm x 42cm) and I'm very happy with what it looks like, but I know it's missing something.

Also, I know the looks on the kids faces aren't all ideal, but hey, waddya gonna do?

If anyone has any advice, go for it.

Thanks in advance guys!

However this is NOT a 'Chop the Chopper' thread!
Don't turn them into squirrels, or from KISS, or anything else!

Two of these bubby's are mine and the rest are my nieces & nephews so no smart-ass chopping in this thread please!

Please don't use outer glow dude...
Now stuff that could be bettered, lamb's lighting isn't right, cradle's wood looks repetitive, straw isn't cut out too well...

Edit: I just experimented making an outer glow
Take the outer glow off the angels, now make a copy of the each of their layers, blur them with gaussian blur, set radius to 4.8, put the copied layers under the original layers. If the original layers look a bit too sharp soften their edges with an eraser brush.
Also noticed no cradle casts no shadow

P.s. Love the kid that's like "YES!"

Those three are angels, angels, glow... no?

I will work on that cradle, but any advice on what I can use around the angels?

But almost always effects that you make in PS look better than filters or layer styles.

Defintely no glow, box could look like this and crop baby with blanket. If you look at nativity scenes the baby is on straw.

Got rid of 'outer glow' & created 2 layers behind the angels with gaussian blurs on them

Darkened the crib, added more shadow underneath it.

The lamb i'll probably leave as is. I know the shadows are crazy compared to the rest of the image but it's for a printout to go in a frame for my parents, they won't critique the shadows too much.

But keep it coming, the crib was a rush job so I'll try to work on that tomorrow, but I think it looks better darker already.

The psd is up to 700mb now, takes 4 minutes just to save the damn thing, i'll have to go through and merge as many layers as I can in the morning to get it down to a manageable size.

Thanks guys, feel free to make more suggestions, much appreciated!


This image is lighter than the first because I left the noise & a levels layer off, it just took too long to save that I couldn't be buggered.

If you are using a glow, make it a warmer golden glow. White is too harsh. Also you can copy the entire image, put it on it's own layer and then do a Filter/Render/ Lighting effects on it. The pull down menu has 2 o'clock spotlight setting. It's a good starting point. It will give the image a consistent color feel. Or you could so what Anfa does and create a clouds layer using warm colors. Golds and warm orange. Put it on the top layer and set it to soft light and drop the opacity.
Or try the photo filters. Use golden warm colors.
This is a quick version using the 2 o'clock and the omni light



I did not adjust their glows because I do not have the layers but you get the idea.

Here's what I think is my final version:



The manger was going to be changed to a real one but my Mum wanted the one I made.

Many thanks to all who replied and the pm's I received, much appreciated.

If I've left out something glaringly obvious please let me know, but otherwise I'm really happy with this, it prints out much nicer than the original.

And thanks to Rey for the lighting post. Did you post and then later edit it? I didn't see that the first time round.
I did end up using both your lighting tips, the warm clouds on a very transparent softlight layer and then the 2oclock slightly modified so the boring edges are darkened.

Thanks guys & girls, I've got about 150 photos from this day, lots of closeups of each of the kids and in groups, so you may see this thread pop up again when I need more help!