Studio effect background in PP?

[tenohfive]

In the spirit of populating the Photoshop wiki (great idea) I thought I'd start a new thread for something else I'm trying to do rather than stick the question in another thread.

I've got a portrait I'm working on that was taken in someone's front room and I was hoping to give it a studio effect background (and maybe go B&W once that's done.) At the moment I'm using the background eraser tool, discontinguous, 5% tolerance as that doesn't seem to affect the person in the shot too much. It's leaving a grainy outline but I'm happy to spend some time going over that again with a higher tolerance, but the bit's that are done still look a bit flat and it's destroying hair etc. Any ideas how I can get the effect I'm aiming for?

[mcflurry]

For hair, I would use a colour selection to separate it from the background.
(Sorry I can't put up a picture as am on a smartphone)

[Pixel Pusher]

If it was me, I would start by pathing out the person, but go loose around the hair. Then get them onto their own layer.

Using a selection of smaller brushes, edit the "loose" background away closer to the hair through a layer mask. You could also look into loading some custom Hair Brushes as well if you need to over paint and then replace authentically.

There have been a few recent threads along not too dissimilar lines and most of the solutions involve layer masks.

Guys (who aren't familiar with them), get your head around them. Quality tool.

Cheers, PP.

ETA, quick tip. If you have a tricky subject like this (hair) and you have a bit of contrast between the model and the background, try making a copy of the image in B/W, put a huge contrast curve on it and then using the colour range tool to make a selection.

Save the selection as an alpha channel and then load it into the coloured version.

Edited by Pixel Pusher on Friday 16th March 13:51

Edited by Pixel Pusher on Friday 16th March 14:06

[tenohfive]

Those tricks sound quite handy for the one side of it, but how do I stop the background looking flat?

[Simpo Two]

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'studio effect background'.

[rex]

Try using calculations. Choose the colour channel that has the most contrast with the background. Use multiply and keep repeating till contrast is maximised. You can then create a mask and then separate.

Technique is from Guy Gowan. Not easy to do but once learnt is very quick and works well on fine hair. He has a DVD that shows the technique which I have somewhere. More than happy to lend it to you.

[tenohfive]

Simpo Two said:

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'studio effect background'.

Plucked at random from Google images to illustrate what I'm aiming for. Though not the greatest example as the subject of my photo is side on and looking out of shot:

[tenohfive]

rex said:

Try using calculations. Choose the colour channel that has the most contrast with the background. Use multiply and keep repeating till contrast is maximised. You can then create a mask and then separate.

Technique is from Guy Gowan. Not easy to do but once learnt is very quick and works well on fine hair. He has a DVD that shows the technique which I have somewhere. More than happy to lend it to you.

I'll look into that, cheers.

[Simpo Two]

tenohfive said:

Plucked at random from Google images to illustrate what I'm aiming for. Though not the greatest example as the subject of my photo is side on and looking out of shot

Okey doke.

Well obviously even if you succeed, the lighting on the subject will be wrong for the background - but you may be OK with that.

I haven't seen the starting image and I may be wrong but I think you're trying to roll something in glitter... the best way would be to reshoot with something white in the b/g - even a sheet will make your task of cutting out much easier. That's my 4p though there may be other ways to skin the cat to your satisfaction

[tenohfive]

Point taken. Not able to reshoot but with the learning curve I've currently got ahead of me and 20 odd other photos to try and process (from 500 originals) it sounds like this one's worth skipping.