help with blurring background

david1701

david1701

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David
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Hi guys

I am doing a portrait of a friend for her BF for his birthday and have decided on using this shot, To do so I need to clean up the background and smooth out the creases ect, how would you recomed me do this?

If anyone wants to play I can email the RAW file

IMG_5377.jpg


Regards David
 
Mask the area off.

Add a level adjustment layer

Ramp the levels right down so the whites are blown.

Like this:

mask.jpg
 
IMG_5377_3.jpg


did it, also applied an unsharp mask to her eyes to make them pop a bit more, the problem is the edges of her, most paticuarly her hair look a bit bad any thoughts on how to fix that?
 
Use a softer edge on the mask. Either by using a softer brush or just doing a localised blur where needed.

Also for her hair, just mask it out, A) makes it tidier, b) makes it much easier for you. I'm thinking the bit on the left and the two loops at least on the right.

You can still see some of the sheet behind through the hair, just cut all that hair out.
Plus there's a hair on her right hand to be cloned.
 
right worked out how to soften the mask edges

what do you mean mask out the hair?

so cut out the edges of the hair, I'll have a go at that

the cloning should be ok
 
didn't get the cutting out of hair to work, don't understand what you mean by mask out either :confused:

also would some kind of soft focus be useful here ?
if so which filter would be best, just looked through them and not had anything jump out as soft focus
 
david1701 said:
right worked out how to soften the mask edges

what do you mean mask out the hair?

so cut out the edges of the hair, I'll have a go at that

the cloning should be ok
Click to expand...

Just make a new layer - I see you went to pure white for the background - and paint over the hair with the same colour as the bg i.e. 255,255,255.

mask2.jpg


you can also just about get away with selecting the colour area inside the hair etc using Select colour range and + ing all the colours to the selection. Then dropping them out. A small gaussian blur aferwards will clean up the edges and looks fairly natural.
 
just a quick 5 minute edit i used a masking plugin to seperate the subject from the backdrop managing to keep the hair intact as much as possible then applied a gausian blur to the bacdrop layer and used a plugin on the models skin see what u think if u want u can send me the raw file and i`ll have a proper go....

IMG_5377.jpg
 
adamjt7 said:
just a quick 5 minute edit i used a masking plugin to seperate the subject from the backdrop managing to keep the hair intact as much as possible then applied a gausian blur to the bacdrop layer and used a plugin on the models skin see what u think if u want u can send me the raw file and i`ll have a proper go....
Click to expand...

Nice PP. What plugins did you use? Have played with a couple of masking plugs but they never really seemed to deliver.
 
amb3rsil said:
Nice PP. What plugins did you use? Have played with a couple of masking plugs but they never really seemed to deliver.
Click to expand...



hi i used fluidmask for the masking it a good plugin it sort of draws a map on the picture and basically you just paint the area u want masking u can zoom to indiviual pixels so u can get a realy clean cutout...if that makes any sense...
 
hi which was the plugin youy used for the skin? I tried a few from virtual photographer and none come out as subtle as your result ?

Tried using the gaussian blur and it came out very well, thanks for the help
 
IMG_5377.jpg
IMG_5377.jpg



Auto levels
Convert to layer, add layer mask
Add a new layer, move it below the image.
On the new layer add a radial gradient from darker at the bottom to lightest at the top.
Paint on the layer mask of the topmost layer to reveal the background. The trick for the hair to to use a soft small brush and gently work the edges. It's actually a lot harder when you're replacing the background with one that's lighter/darker or a different colour.
Finally, I added a drop shadow layer style, very large and soft with low opacity to simulate the original shadow.

I only spent a few mins on the layer mask, it should really be a bit neater but the jpeg compression made it all a bit noisy anyway.
 
Thanks guys for all your help, gave her the picture this morning and she loved it, came out quite nicely on the printer aswell
 
Fantastic job px18, can only dream that i may some day produce such a great piece of work.
 
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