portrait selection options

Heather You will find it very difficult to do commercially, the time involved is huge, the big problem is (as you have found) cutting out the hair, the best colour background to go for is probably the same colour as the hair, browish, but failing that use a natural colour grey, or white you will find any other colours will leave a coloured halo round the face, I find using a mixture of the quick mask to cut out the person, and the history brush to replace stuff I have removed accidently the best way, I also blur the quick mask with a gausian blur, there are three real secrets to making it look right, firstly get the lighting right, if the lighting on the fake scene is very different to the face it will look very strange, and watch sharpnesses, think depth of field! don’t have the fake background too sharp! also watch out for edge sharpness, the picture will look very strange if the cutout edge is sharper than other parts of the image, Hope this helps

"Miss Heather" wrote in message

Hi there,
I have a portrait studio and a reasonable amount of photoshop experience. Some of my customers have enquired about customized manipulated photos which I’m confident I could do if I knew the techniques involved. I have searched the internet forth and back, and downside up, trying to discern a definitive method of capturing and separating a subject and pasting it in a new scene. So…
Starting from scratch. What is the best background to shoot against? white, blue, grey, and why?

I’ve done many experiments but get messed up with fine details such as hair. I’ve found that no matter how accurately I manage to build a mask, or layer mask, when I inevitably convert it to a selection things fall apart and become quite crude, hair disappears, large blocks appear etc.
I realize this seems like a silly question in this day and age but I’ve searched the web without satisfaction. I’ll upgrade to CS if necessary. Any suggestions? Links? Good books? Tutorials?

Heather

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 07:01:11 GMT, Miss Heather
wrote:

Hi there,
I have a portrait studio and a reasonable amount of photoshop experience. Some of my customers have enquired about customized manipulated photos which I’m confident I could do if I knew the techniques involved. I have searched the internet forth and back, and downside up, trying to discern a definitive method of capturing and separating a subject and pasting it in a new scene. So…
Starting from scratch. What is the best background to shoot against? white, blue, grey, and why?

I’ve done many experiments but get messed up with fine details such as hair. I’ve found that no matter how accurately I manage to build a mask, or layer mask, when I inevitably convert it to a selection things fall apart and become quite crude, hair disappears, large blocks appear etc.
I realize this seems like a silly question in this day and age but I’ve searched the web without satisfaction. I’ll upgrade to CS if necessary. Any suggestions? Links? Good books? Tutorials?

Martyn has given you a lot of good advice. The one thing I know that could help is a good book 😉 Two, in fact.

Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann
How to cheat in Photoshop by Steve Caplin

Like Martyn says, a lot of these types of photograph fail because the light isn’t right and that’s the main thing you need to get right. As for backgrounds, I would suggest dark for light haired people, light for dark haired people as that makes removing the background much easier.

Good luck 🙂

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

Thanks guys.

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 07:01:11 GMT, Miss Heather
wrote:

Hi there,
I have a portrait studio and a reasonable amount of photoshop experience. Some of my customers have enquired about customized manipulated photos which I’m confident I could do if I knew the techniques involved. I have searched the internet forth and back, and downside up, trying to discern a definitive method of capturing and separating a subject and pasting it in a new scene. So…
Starting from scratch. What is the best background to shoot against? white, blue, grey, and why?

I’ve done many experiments but get messed up with fine details such as hair. I’ve found that no matter how accurately I manage to build a mask, or layer mask, when I inevitably convert it to a selection things fall apart and become quite crude, hair disappears, large blocks appear etc.
I realize this seems like a silly question in this day and age but I’ve searched the web without satisfaction. I’ll upgrade to CS if necessary. Any suggestions? Links? Good books? Tutorials?

Martyn has given you a lot of good advice. The one thing I know that could help is a good book 😉 Two, in fact.

Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann
How to cheat in Photoshop by Steve Caplin

Like Martyn says, a lot of these types of photograph fail because the light isn’t right and that’s the main thing you need to get right. As for backgrounds, I would suggest dark for light haired people, light for dark haired people as that makes removing the background much easier.

Good luck 🙂

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

Suggest that you try a book called "The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers" by Scott Kelby.
Look for it on Amazon where I found a new copy considerable cheaper than the published price of $39.99 USA $62.99 Can