problem changing a background

J
Posted By
JC Dill
Apr 19, 2007
Views
405
Replies
10
Status
Closed
I’m helping a fellow photographer. The photographer took a series of portraits in front of a green background and now wants to swap in a different background. I made an action that copied the image, selected and deleted the green, copied the background from another image, pasted it and moved the layer behind the cutout image. It works fine for most of the images BUT there are some that we are having real problems with. These are the images with fair hair or fly-away hair – we get dark green fringing and the selection edges are horrible.

I’ve uploaded a few sample images here:

http://jcdill.com/misc/

The 029 image I used the magic wand to select the green background. The 037 image I used select -> color range to select the green. As you can see, both give horrible results. The magic wand selection works OK for the other images where the hair is darker or doesn’t have fly-away edges.

There are about 20 images with this problem.

I can use PS7, PS CS2, or PS CS3.

I’d love some suggestions on the most time effective way to solve this green fringing problem.

Thanks!

jc



"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot of different horses without having to own that many." ~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare’s Nest, PA

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

TW
Toobi Won Kenobi
Apr 19, 2007
"JC Dill" wrote in message
I’m helping a fellow photographer. The photographer took a series of portraits in front of a green background and now wants to swap in a different background. I made an action that copied the image, selected and deleted the green, copied the background from another image, pasted it and moved the layer behind the cutout image. It works fine for most of the images BUT there are some that we are having real problems with. These are the images with fair hair or fly-away hair – we get dark green fringing and the selection edges are horrible.

I’ve uploaded a few sample images here:

http://jcdill.com/misc/

The 029 image I used the magic wand to select the green background. The 037 image I used select -> color range to select the green. As you can see, both give horrible results. The magic wand selection works OK for the other images where the hair is darker or doesn’t have fly-away edges.

There are about 20 images with this problem.

I can use PS7, PS CS2, or PS CS3.

I’d love some suggestions on the most time effective way to solve this green fringing problem.

Thanks!

jc



"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot of different horses without having to own that many." ~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare’s Nest, PA

JC,

What you describe is one of the most difficult subjects to isolate realistically, it can be done to some extent but usually not quickly. I’ve also read that green is not a good colour to use for separtion as it introduces unnatural shades into things like hair which is dificult to remove. It may be OK for movie/back projection work where a computer replaces the green with something else but not for still, white or a pale grey background would be better.

See http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov

TWK
K
KatWoman
Apr 19, 2007
"Toobi Won Kenobi" wrote in message
"JC Dill" wrote in message
I’m helping a fellow photographer. The photographer took a series of portraits in front of a green background and now wants to swap in a different background. I made an action that copied the image, selected and deleted the green, copied the background from another image, pasted it and moved the layer behind the cutout image. It works fine for most of the images BUT there are some that we are having real problems with. These are the images with fair hair or fly-away hair – we get dark green fringing and the selection edges are horrible.

I’ve uploaded a few sample images here:

http://jcdill.com/misc/

The 029 image I used the magic wand to select the green background. The 037 image I used select -> color range to select the green. As you can see, both give horrible results. The magic wand selection works OK for the other images where the hair is darker or doesn’t have fly-away edges.

There are about 20 images with this problem.

I can use PS7, PS CS2, or PS CS3.

I’d love some suggestions on the most time effective way to solve this green fringing problem.

Thanks!

jc



"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot of different horses without having to own that many." ~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare’s Nest, PA

JC,

What you describe is one of the most difficult subjects to isolate realistically, it can be done to some extent but usually not quickly. I’ve also read that green is not a good colour to use for separtion as it introduces unnatural shades into things like hair which is dificult to remove. It may be OK for movie/back projection work where a computer replaces the green with something else but not for still, white or a pale grey background would be better.

See http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov
TWK
for one or two images I would use selective color or channels to remove some green
but selection of the area to adjust would not be auto, it would have to be selected and feathered manually for each image

I did see some discussions on this awhile ago but as it did not apply to me personally I didn’t save the info

I think I was googling about chroma key
JM
John McWilliams
Apr 19, 2007
Toobi Won Kenobi wrote:
"JC Dill" wrote in message
I’m helping a fellow photographer. The photographer took a series of portraits in front of a green background and now wants to swap in a different background. I made an action that copied the image, selected and deleted the green, copied the background from another image, pasted it and moved the layer behind the cutout image. It works fine for most of the images BUT there are some that we are having real problems with. These are the images with fair hair or fly-away hair – we get dark green fringing and the selection edges are horrible.

I’ve uploaded a few sample images here:

http://jcdill.com/misc/

The 029 image I used the magic wand to select the green background. The 037 image I used select -> color range to select the green. As you can see, both give horrible results. The magic wand selection works OK for the other images where the hair is darker or doesn’t have fly-away edges.

There are about 20 images with this problem.

I can use PS7, PS CS2, or PS CS3.

I’d love some suggestions on the most time effective way to solve this green fringing problem.

What you describe is one of the most difficult subjects to isolate realistically, it can be done to some extent but usually not quickly. I’ve also read that green is not a good colour to use for separtion as it introduces unnatural shades into things like hair which is dificult to remove. It may be OK for movie/back projection work where a computer replaces the green with something else but not for still, white or a pale grey background would be better.

See http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov

It’s easier now with improved selection tools than the fairly old Dr. Brown tutorial, which I was very glad to see again, as it reinforces what I was reading in the Eismann book. For fine hair/flyouts, it seems as though creating a mask is the only way to go, although I’d love to be wrong about this.

JC- I think you’re to be congratulated for automating this to work on a batch basis! Could you post a couple where your action did do o.k.?


John McWilliams

Everything old is new again in the latest film about the beloved pooch with the I.Q. of a grad student and the instincts of a boomerang.
[NY Times; Review of "Lassie".}
J
JC Dill
Apr 19, 2007
On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:36:14 +0100, "Toobi Won Kenobi" wrote:

What you describe is one of the most difficult subjects to isolate realistically, it can be done to some extent but usually not quickly. I’ve also read that green is not a good colour to use for separtion as it introduces unnatural shades into things like hair which is dificult to remove. It may be OK for movie/back projection work where a computer replaces the green with something else but not for still, white or a pale grey background would be better.

See http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov

Hi Toobi,

Yes, I know that this is really difficult and that green is not the best choice for the backdrop. The photographer now knows, for next time. (There were several other mistakes as well, including placing the backdrop too close to the subject so that it is in focus, and so that the subject casts a shadow on the background.) But we have to fix these photos, this time.

Thanks for the link I’m going to give that technique a try right now.

I saw Dr. Brown give a demo at MacWorld for the first time this spring, he’s great! Is there an index or home page for his demos? Going up the file tree in the URL above doesn’t bring up any index or home pages. 🙁

jc



"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot of different horses without having to own that many." ~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare’s Nest, PA
R
Rob
Apr 19, 2007
JC Dill wrote:
I’m helping a fellow photographer. The photographer took a series of portraits in front of a green background and now wants to swap in a different background. I made an action that copied the image, selected and deleted the green, copied the background from another image, pasted it and moved the layer behind the cutout image. It works fine for most of the images BUT there are some that we are having real problems with. These are the images with fair hair or fly-away hair – we get dark green fringing and the selection edges are horrible.

I’ve uploaded a few sample images here:

http://jcdill.com/misc/

The 029 image I used the magic wand to select the green background. The 037 image I used select -> color range to select the green. As you can see, both give horrible results. The magic wand selection works OK for the other images where the hair is darker or doesn’t have fly-away edges.

There are about 20 images with this problem.

I can use PS7, PS CS2, or PS CS3.

I’d love some suggestions on the most time effective way to solve this green fringing problem.

Thanks!

jc

More than likely you may get away with using the extract tool.

Duplicate layer – bin the background layer – extract – then add new layer for your background – flatten.
J
JC Dill
Apr 19, 2007
On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:05:30 -0700, John McWilliams
wrote:

JC- I think you’re to be congratulated for automating this to work on a batch basis!

Thank you! I’m still a novice at actions and I’m pretty proud that I got this one to work as well as I did.

Could you post a couple where your action did do o.k.?

Sure!

I never saw the entire batch. There were ~200 photos. I had 3 representative photos to work with, and then yesterday they sent me the ones that they couldn’t get to work with the batch action.

I just uploaded more files to jcdill.com/misc

There’s a zip file with the action inside. This is the action I sent to the other photographer. The action is designed to be run in batch mode, source is a folder full of files, the action runs and saves back to the source. It is presently set for confirmation for each step, after rerecording the first open (where the background file is located) and testing to make sure it works, then disable the confirmations and let it rip.

There are files named test1. One is the source file from the other photographer, 2 others are versions of the file after the action – 1 with a black background and then another with the colored background after the photographer provided the background. I’ve also included the background file.

What I’m doing now is running the action on each file, one by one, and stopping the action before the select. Then I’m doing the select by hand (following Dr. Brown’s video), then letting the action finish the process after the select. I’d automate Dr. Brown’s channel mask selection trick except that the remaining images are all different enough that the time to automate it for just a few images and then adjust for the next set isn’t worth it.

jc



"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot of different horses without having to own that many." ~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare’s Nest, PA
TN
Tom Nelson
Apr 20, 2007
One quick-and-dirty fix is to sample the color of the uncontaminated hair, then paint the hair edge in Color mode. Change your sample color frequently to avoid too uniform a look. This assumes you’ve already extracted the subject from the background.
Tom Nelson
Tom Nelson Photography
J
JC Dill
Apr 20, 2007
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:27:44 +1000, Rob wrote:

More than likely you may get away with using the extract tool.
Duplicate layer – bin the background layer – extract – then add new layer for your background – flatten.

I tried extract first – it apparently doesn’t know how to get the hair without the green fringing. 🙁

jc



"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot of different horses without having to own that many." ~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare’s Nest, PA
J
Joe
Apr 20, 2007
JC Dill wrote:

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:27:44 +1000, Rob wrote:

More than likely you may get away with using the extract tool.
Duplicate layer – bin the background layer – extract – then add new layer for your background – flatten.

I tried extract first – it apparently doesn’t know how to get the hair without the green fringing. 🙁

Greenscreen and plug-in are expensive toys for Video or small photo for displaying, not for detailed photo and large print. Also, you will have to have good lighting to be able to get the green to have similar color to select.

Here are few choices you can pick

– Learn Quick Mask. I don’t do channel like the free video tutorial from Mr. Russ Brown (hope I get the name right) but many people like the technique and getting pretty good with this masking.

Me, I have been doing for some years using just the simple tools, and the combination of quick & dirty technique

– Forget about the greenscreen as you don’t really need greenscreen. If you have $150-200 to spend then you may want to try these 2 plug-ins

– Fluid Mask $200 is pretty good in general, but their registration (activation) sux big time as it will require paid customers to re-activate every number of days or it will turn into DEMO.

– EZ-Mask $150 is pretty good with flying hair, very simple to use (similar to Photoshop’s Extract but much better and cleaner)

..The 2 above will help to get most background removed, but you still need some fine-tuning using your Photoshop skill.

– I don’t do flying hair, but one of my dirty tricks to deal with some flying hair is.

– Create a LAYER

– Use Hair Brush to draw some hair (to make the photo looks real or to cover some ugly edge hard to mask etc.)

– Then use all available tools like Erase, Opacity, Brush Size etc. to blend the hair to the main photo
JM
John McWilliams
Apr 27, 2007
JC Dill wrote:

I saw Dr. Brown give a demo at MacWorld for the first time this spring, he’s great! Is there an index or home page for his demos? Going up the file tree in the URL above doesn’t bring up any index or home pages. 🙁

Russellbrown.com!


john mcwilliams

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

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