I have to suggestions for moving a finely detailed bird to another background

"Sam Kirkpatrick" wrote:

I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. I tried selecting using the magnetic lasso but it gets tedious quickly when I’m trying to surround these hundreds of fine feathers, plus its going to look too sharp once moved to the new background. Suggestions for moving this finely detailed bird? Pointers to any on-line sources would be greatly appreciated.

Same old suggestion! you will need to master the Masking technique to be able to enjoy the next level of Photoshoping. And it may depend on your current Photoshop skill, mastering the Masking technique may take at least few weeks to few months of hard parcticing to get a hang of it.

A shortcut which won’t help you to improve Photoshop skill should be able to skip the learning is using plug-in like Fluid Mask or EZ-Mask. There are around dozen plug-ins but I don’t use any to know much small detail, but just by looking at the video tutorial I can pretty much be able to smell which does a good job and which tries to fool viewer.

Thanks,
Sam

"Sam Kirkpatrick" wrote: I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem

I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. (clip)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I use Elements, but I am sure my method would work in the full Photoshop as well. There are lots of choices for the shape of the clone tool. In Elements, there are two that I frequently use to do hair, which has similar problems to the ones you cite. This is how to proceed: Select around your eagle and delete the background. On a new layer, I use a clone shaped like a blade of grass. (The other choice I often use is a little trident of three blades of grass.) Choose a spot in the feathers in a suitable color and click. ON A NEW LAYER, clone some blades of grass. They will be the same color as your feathers, and about the right shape. If you drag the clone tool, you will get a sort of random row of "feathers." Select around these, and then use the Move tool to drag them to a suitable position on the edge of your eagle. Use the Move tool to stretch or rotate these "feathers." After you get them in a good position, you can use the eraser to make them less opaque, and the blur tool to make them less sharp. You can also control the opacity, which is useful when you want the background to appear through the details of the eagle’s feathers. Do this over and over until all the sharp cut-off edges of your selected eagle are covered and look natural. Flatten the image, and you’re ready to put it in front of a new background. It will take some time, but you will see it working, so keep at it until you are satisfied.

I have never done feathers, but I have done hair very convincingly, with the background showing through.

Sam Kirkpatrick wrote:

I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. I tried selecting using the magnetic lasso but it gets tedious quickly when I’m trying to surround these hundreds of fine feathers, plus its going to look too sharp once moved to the new background. Suggestions for moving this finely detailed bird? Pointers to any on-line sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

This is a bit old school. I use CS3.

Go to the channels pallet and toggle through the channel to find the channel which has the most contrast between the area around the background and the feathers (assuming white part of the eagles head). Duplicate this channel.

Switch to the brush tool and changes it’s mode to overlay.

Change your colors to the default colors (black/white).

You may need to invert the channel (control-i) since white will end up being your selection.

Paint on the duplicated channel (white being what you want to be selected, black excluded from the selection), by starting in the white of the feather and approach the edge of the feather. You will notice that the brush will not paint, or very little blead, into the background if the background is darker than the feathers. You may find the need to switch to black and paint on the background to further refine the edge. You may also need to go over the white and black multiple times to make it completely white/black.

Fill in each area with 100% white/black either with a selection or using the brush with mode = normal.

control-click the duplicated channel icon to make your selection, then save your selection. You can now go back to the layers pallet, load your selection, use refine edge and do whatever you want.

You may need to play with it a bit, but this method does work quite nicely for this type of selection.

—

Len

Hey. I saw a nice tutorial for that kind of action, but since i can’t find it anymore, let me explain you how can you do this.
First – open your image with PS and go to the Channels palette. Now’s the tricky part – check every channel and see in what channel your bird differs from the backround the most. When you find id – select this channel and duplicate it. Now turn off the visibility of every channel (RGB, Red, Green, Blue) except your copy of the channel, you just made. Now select your copy of the channel and set the channel option to "Selected areas". You can call the Channel options pop-up window by pressing the area as shown here: http://one.xthost.info/template/scr.JPG
This action should invert the colours of your b/w photo – but don’t worry. Next thing to do is to set the Image-> Adjustments -> Levelst so the Eagle differs from the background even more – try various of sets so your eagle should be (almost) completely white, and your background – black. Hit OK, and if there’re some areas of your eagle still not white – just paint it with the brush tool with white. On the other hand – if some of the background elements are still not black – fill them with brush tool (black color of course). Now all you have to do is to make a selection – ctrl + click on your copied channel, turn on the RGB channel, go back to your layers palette and copy/paste the selected area.

I imagine this explanation could be little confusing or hard-to-understand, but i assure you – it’s very effective. If you try it and still have some problems – please fell free to e-mail me, and perhaps I can help you more.

LorDex

U

On 2008-06-28 05:34:05 -0700, "Sam Kirkpatrick" said:

I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. I tried selecting using the magnetic lasso but it gets tedious quickly when I’m trying to surround these hundreds of fine feathers, plus its going to look too sharp once moved to the new background. Suggestions for moving this finely detailed bird? Pointers to any on-line sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

I know there are lots of short-cuts using the channels pallet, but for my money, and I have to do this often, I like to pains-takingly use the path tool to outline the area I want or save or remove, change the path to a selection and delete the parts I don’t want. Then, I use the blur tool with three-, five- or nine-pixel brush setting to blur the edges I’ve cut. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but the results are terrific! After that step, a bit of touching up with the eraser may be called for.

I’m sure that somebody will chime in with a time-saving method, and I’d really love to find one that works! The problem I’ve had is that the image that the method-pushers use is somehow uniquely suited for the method. Take it out of context and into the real world and it ain’t so good no more.
—
Bream Rockmetteller
Donaldson’s Dog Joy
509-450-0301

Learn photography. Kill photoshop. Get a life.

"John wrote: wrote: Learn photography. Kill photoshop. Get a life. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Troll meter needle wrapped around the right-hand pin.

"Sam Kirkpatrick" wrote in message

I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. I tried selecting using the magnetic lasso but it gets tedious quickly when I’m trying to surround these hundreds of fine feathers, plus its going to look too sharp once moved to the new background. Suggestions for moving this finely detailed bird? Pointers to any on-line sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

OK I have spent time making selections
more time than I would like
I still find the odd picture here and there is quite difficult to silhouette

so today I answered a spam from a clipping company in Thailand I got a perfect path back in less than a few hours
first one is FREE
http://www.clipping provider.com

remove spaces

I am quite happy with the results, it saved me much time I can charge my clients more than they charge me
the prices are quite reasonable
I may never do this grunt work myself ever again

the channels method BTW is a Russell Brown vid on his site

John wrote:

Learn photography. Kill photoshop. Get a life.

You may need a life because photography has nothing to do with masking <bg>

Bream Rockmetteller wrote:

On 2008-06-28 05:34:05 -0700, "Sam Kirkpatrick" said:

I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. I tried selecting using the magnetic lasso but it gets tedious quickly when I’m trying to surround these hundreds of fine feathers, plus its going to look too sharp once moved to the new background. Suggestions for moving this finely detailed bird? Pointers to any on-line sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

I know there are lots of short-cuts using the channels pallet, but for my money, and I have to do this often, I like to pains-takingly use the path tool to outline the area I want or save or remove, change the path to a selection and delete the parts I don’t want. Then, I use the blur tool with three-, five- or nine-pixel brush setting to blur the edges I’ve cut. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but the results are terrific! After that step, a bit of touching up with the eraser may be called for.

I’m sure that somebody will chime in with a time-saving method, and I’d really love to find one that works! The problem I’ve had is that the image that the method-pushers use is somehow uniquely suited for the method. Take it out of context and into the real world and it ain’t so good no more.

I have seen several free video tutorials (few pretty good while most way too much cheating) and I have even tried the pretty propular Masking technique by one called Dr. Russel (or Russell?) which is pretty good but I can’t get what I want, so I stick with my old technique which I have developed and used for years.

I also have the chance to look at the commercial video call Mask & Channel by Lynda which shows many different techniques and lot more detail than others I have seen. Many of them are similar to what I was trying to get but got stuck at some point then gave up (I learn to develope my own technique by combining all the technique’s I know but didn’t get very far), and I am doing fine with my own style to change. So, if anyone wanna learn Masking then one may want to take a look at Mask & Channel

I do lot lof masking but don’t do flying hair, especially the "F" masking like Fur or Feather, but I have seen the video tutorial of EZ-Mask which seens to do quite good on FUR. I don’t use EZ-Mask to know if it will do all the fur as good as the sample, but it’s so simple, quick, and lot more than I can do.

Thanks for all the helpful responses. Despite trying practically all suggestions and a few others from around the web, I opted to return to the location where I took the image and took several background shots. Then, it was just a matter of forming a mosaic with the original background still intact. An inconvenience because the location was some miles away, but far better than trying to remove the Eagle and place it into another background.

Sam

"Sam Kirkpatrick" wrote in message

I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. I tried selecting using the magnetic lasso but it gets tedious quickly when I’m trying to surround these hundreds of fine feathers, plus its going to look too sharp once moved to the new background. Suggestions for moving this finely detailed bird? Pointers to any on-line sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

Leo Lichtman wrote:

"John wrote: wrote: Learn photography. Kill photoshop. Get a life. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Troll meter needle wrapped around the right-hand pin.

And let’s not ignore the fish dangling from the hook.

Joe wrote:

John wrote:

Learn photography. Kill photoshop. Get a life.

You may need a life because photography has nothing to do with masking <bg>

If you do the photograph properly, there will be nothing to mask – the background will be visually acceptable. BTW, masking has been a part of old fashion photography since about 1850.

"Sam Kirkpatrick" wrote: (clip) but far

better than trying to remove the Eagle and place it into another background.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dear Sam: I tried to e-mail you an example of what I have done with the method I posted here earlier. It bounced. If you would like to see it, please e-mail me.

John wrote:

Joe wrote:

John wrote:

Learn photography. Kill photoshop. Get a life.

You may need a life because photography has nothing to do with masking <bg>

If you do the photograph properly, there will be nothing to mask – the background will be visually acceptable. BTW, masking has been a part of old fashion photography since about 1850.

I am a professional photographer and professional photo retoucher. I have only started photography since early 60’s to know anything about 1850 <bg>

And would you tell me what’s properly photograph and how you do it? And bird has nothing to do with fashion, unless you mean people stinking some peacock or feathers on their hat?

Joe wrote:

And would you tell me what’s properly photograph and how you do it?

Show us yours. Did you become a professional retoucher because you couldn’t make the photograph right in the first place?

On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:19:32 -0500, Joe wrote:

And would you tell me what’s properly photograph and how you do it?

….Ignore him. He’s just trolling.

OM
—
]=====================================[
] OMBlog – http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let’s face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

John wrote:

Joe wrote:

And would you tell me what’s properly photograph and how you do it?

Show us yours. Did you become a professional retoucher because you couldn’t make the photograph right in the first place?

Do we need to show ours to get your permit or what? Or just by poiting out your stupid thinker should be more than enough (if you can think).

On Jun 28, 6:34 am, "Sam Kirkpatrick" wrote:

I have an Eagle that I want to move to a different background. The problem I have is that the bird’s edges are very detailed in spots due to the feathers and some of the current background is visible between the fine feathers. I tried selecting using the magnetic lasso but it gets tedious quickly when I’m trying to surround these hundreds of fine feathers, plus its going to look too sharp once moved to the new background. Suggestions for moving this finely detailed bird? Pointers to any on-line sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

With all due respect to previous posts, with which I do not disagree, I refer you to a method described in Deke McClelland’s book, "Macworld Photoshop 4 Bible." I know, I know, it’s outdated, but the problem you have is the problem he addresses in that book. As someone already mentioned, "This is old school."

We’re talking about masking & Deke tells you how to do that. The techniques the previous posts are describing is masking an image, and they do a good job. (BTW, I’ve never masked, using channels, but I’ve gone to selected channels for other purposes.) Once you’ve masked an image, you can move it to whatever background you want, as Deke describes.

As illustration, Deke uses a child image with frizzy hair, much like your eagle feathers. I can’t give you the details because I might violate copyright, and it would be too long for this post. I think I can give you the steps he describes in accomplishing what you want to do. You might search eBay for his book or a similar Macworld Photoshop Bible or similar title for Windows.

The steps he describes will be familiar to you from previous posts. 1. "Browse the color channels." 2. "Copy the channel." 3. "Choose

Filter>Other>High Pass." 4. "Choose Image>Adjust>Levels" 5. "Use the

lasso tool to remove the big stuff you don’t need." 6. "Erase inside the lines with the block eraser." 7. "Switch to color composite view."
8. "Convert the mask channel to a selection." 9. "Drag the selection
and drop it into a different image." Remember, a mask is also a selection, but it has to be converted to one before you can do anything with it.

Hopefully, I’ll not be sued for violating copyright in telling you this much. Google for your problem and look for books by McClelland on PS, esp. the "bibles" he’s authored. He covers Photoshop basics very well, and most of us, I think, need guidance on the basics, which do include masking. Previous posts have given you good advice.

`On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:12:27 -0700 (PDT), Empedocles
wrote:

Hopefully, I’ll not be sued for violating copyright in telling you this much.

….You won’t. You can’t copyright a technique like that. It wouldn’t hold up in court long enough to even get in front of the judge. Especially if it’s from a book that’s long out of print.

OM
—
]=====================================[
] OMBlog – http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let’s face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

On Jul 18, 1:24 pm, OM wrote:

`On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:12:27 -0700 (PDT), Empedocles

wrote:

Hopefully, I’ll not be sued for violating copyright in telling you this much.

…You won’t. You can’t copyright a technique like that. It wouldn’t hold up in court long enough to even get in front of the judge. Especially if it’s from a book that’s long out of print.
OM
—
]=====================================[
] OMBlog -http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let’s face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

Thanks, OM. I appreciate that & will sleep easier. One never knows.