: Matching light and colour of background to imported foreground I'm basically a beginner on Photoshop and I've only done a few compositions but in my most recent one I'm struggling on how to

@Cody3331749

If you had images which fit without major adjustments, this would be a snap. But let's assume there's a good reason to use just these images.

At first clone, smudge and repaint the hair so that there's no ghost lights behind the hair because in the new background there's none. Then decide how bright the man really can be and what is the contrast? The man must get some local light from an invisible source and that light makes him visible. Otherwise the composition would be not interesting.

Here the curves tool is applied to the layer where the man is. The hair was fixed before it:



The face must be about as bright and saturated as the well lighted objects in the background. Actually a little saturation was added to the man, but the uploaded version unfortunately is washed out.

The layer of the man got name "Yellow man" because the local light makes him yellow like the objects in the background. Skylight seems to make everything
magenta, so a copy of the man is made to the top layer. That layer will get magenta color => layer name is Magenta man. Image > adjustments > Hue/Saturation > Colorize is used to make the magenta colored man:



Finally a layer mask is added to Magenta Man -layer. It is radial gradient black to white. It reveals the yellowish face and fades it to magenta. A little white was painted to remove yellowish color under the chin.



The adjustments were made destructively. Using adjustment layers with the "only next layer" switch active, one would get better possiblity to search the right combination. I recommend to use them!

Because the uploaded images seem so flat, I include a dropbox link to the result.
www.dropbox.com/s/tx4dlj17rlusbed/ManInTheAlley.psd?dl=0

Vote Up Vote Down