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Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 10:11 am Post subject: Paula portrait...
ello mate!
ok...I have this picture...
i love the picture...but Paula had to hold her hair back and do some stuff to be able to get the hair going across her face...
can we remove her arm and shoulder? give it a new background?
then i can crop it in a bit...remove the tip 3rd ish...and hey presto!
or do you think its ok? would it look like a floating head if we did that...
oh photoshop expert..pls advise!!!!
critique on the photo from anyone else would help too..
Think you got the crop idea - spot on, just rolled the image up on screen and it works, agree thye arm needs to go, other than that a portrait to be proud of _________________ -----------------------------------------------------
creators, just thought, do you want the original of this or are you going to tell me how to do it?!?!?
if you have the time that is...
cheers mate
Adam
Not too sure, gives her neck a longer look, maybe if the hair was put back at the bottom, tried to keep it, but had lots of issues (whispy hair takes time, and I'm not that good at it, still practicing), will try another way of outlining I've read about that's supposed to give good results _________________ -----------------------------------------------------
Adam, I am incredibly sorry, I missed this somehow. I check it regularly, because you don't get any flashing lights or whirly gigs on the main page, but I missed this one totally. Nice job Dave, I think though, it needs another background to locate Paula's face in place. I'll have a go, this post is just the grovel one.
Edit: I must say, I like the shot very much with Paula's arm in place, but that's no never mind. _________________
Totally agree on the background, my aim was to try and get the hair right, then work on a background, but even with Vertus Fluid Mask 2 - photoshop plug in for masking that got really good reviews- am still finding it difficult, mind you only had the plug in for a day and its not quick - so need to play with it a lot more. _________________ -----------------------------------------------------
I am having a go now and the arm and the folds in her top gives the picture a sensual quality that disappears as soon as you remove it. So my first thought is just to give her a glamour makeover. So this is No 1, sharpened eyes and everything else softened.
First picture I've replaced the arm and background and and applied a Gaussian blur to the new background. The second is with the addition of my standard favorite makeover. A very fine wistful portrait Adam.
MY WORD! outstanding once again Keith..outstanding...
its hard to decide which i like more, with or without the arm!
for a start the make over is stunning..the second pic without the arm is stunning..and Paula is loving it too..
but maybe you are right, maybe it needs the arm..it has a bit of a floaty head feeling to it at the moment...
i wonder if there is a crop to be had...
i think the trouble is that background you have given it really stands out and gives the shot some extra punch, so the shot with the arm now looks like it is missing something, even tho it looks more natural!!
does that make sense!?!??!
still...OUTSTANDING work...
i have a process for doing this model makeover...(the one from the CS2 ebook i got)...how does yours differ from that?
i will post the process if you dont have the book to hand!
thanks for the efforts mate...you are the photochop guru!
I'm so glad you like it and that I am sure you'll keep the picture, it's a great shot. I'll check what I do against the e-book and get back to you. Cheers for now. _________________
cheers mate..
when you get time, no rush, can you explain how you added the background too!!!!
i would love to be able to do this sort of thing for myself!
cheers mate..
when you get time, no rush, can you explain how you added the background too!!!!
i would love to be able to do this sort of thing for myself!
I'll do a walk through on trimming the image and adding a background because it isn't something I've read up, I've developed it over time and it works for me, so I'll give you the full monty. Sleep well, cos it wont happen tonight. _________________
Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 7:45 am Post subject: First technique: clearing areas and adding a background.
First technique: clearing areas and adding a background.
Open the image and duplicate it. Select the background layer and choose Select > All and hit Del. If your colour palette is set to the default colours the background will turn white, if you know you would like a black background to work against reverse the default colours before you hit delete, I find that sometimes I need to work against a colour and sometimes against a clear background, you can do this by turning the background image on and off in the layers palette.
If you zoom in really close you'll see that even the sharpest edge is anti-aliased, and there is a bleed over between objects.
To blend one image with another well, all this bleed has got to be removed. At the size of images that come out of our cameras removing up to 10 pixels from the edge of a face or any other object is not going to significantly show up as odd in any way.
Although there are plenty of ways to select an object with the lasoo tool, polygon lasoo tool and magnetic lasoo tool, I still find it easier, and I have more control, to just get on and use the eraser tool. It's very nice to think there are quick ways of doing things and for some things there are, but at this level of work, taking your time pays immense dividends in producing realistic pictures. It also helps to be anally retentive, but we wont go there.
Set the eraser tool to a hard edged brush, the first brushes that appear in the drop down menu.
Set the hardness to 100% and the flow to 100%. Even at these settings PS will erase and leave an anti-aliased edge. For PSP users set the hardness and opacity to 50 - 70% for a 10 pixel brush and reduce for smaller sized brushes.
I usually trace the contour of the area I want to isolate with a brush size of up to 10 pixels. I click so that the brush overlaps the anti-aliased line about half way. I do my first click, hold down shift and begin clicking along the line, curve or whatever to get a smooth line. The next picture shows how close I'm zoomed in to do the erasing.
Once I've erased around the outline I'll get close to the trickier bits like hair and gaps in hair, but I wont do anything other than erase roughly until after the next stage. Once you're happy with the outline, choose the lasoo tool, lasoo and remove everything from the background you don't want.
Choosing the background and putting that in place.
I really take my time over choosing a background image and over what to do with it. I got lucky with the picture of Paula and decided I was happy with my third choice. It took a while to resize the image and get it into a position I was happy with (that's a whole process in itself and if anyone needs a walkthrough, shout) and then to decide on the amount of Guassian blur to apply (I went for a radius of 10).
Using the magic wand tool I select the erased area on the foreground image of Paula's face and feather by 1 (PSP this can be between 5 and 10). Hit the delete key and move around the image to see how it'd blending, how many times you hit delete is down to your eye.
I then get to the tricky bits, and on this image it's Paula's fringe. Using a very small brush I get rid of all the stuff I don't want, Using the blur tool, smudge tool and clone stamp I will try to make it as real as possible. Had this image been for print I would have taken a lot longer, undoing and redoing until it was as near perfect as possible. This is the most exacting stage and can take longer than any other stage.
The last process is checking that the background and foreground are congruent in terms of temperature and light using the levels and curves palettes. This image was fine so I didn't need to go there.
Next job makeover and the subject of another walkthrough. _________________
Last edited by creators on Thu May 10, 2007 2:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
It's amazing what you can use as backgrounds. Once you've got something you think you can vaguely use and then mess about with it, it can be almost anything. Flowers, machinery, urban streets, shapes or colour blobs...
I need to own up to something here, I do all my make overs in PSP X, £50 from Amazon and worth every penny to have in your tool kit. I can do a walk through for Photoshop but it's all in the ebook and then refining the techniques to suit you. If you or anyone wants a PSP walk through I'm happy to share my little secrets. I'm sure Dave has found the same, the Clarify, Digital camera noise removal and Black and White photo filters, amongst others, are bloody amazing in PSP. Purists may shriek but I don't care, I'll use any tool to do the job I want including MS Paint if it comes down to that. I also swap between packages, so I might do a whole lot of work in PSP and then throw it into Elements or PS for a bit of Diffuse Glow or reverse Diffuse Glow or anything else and so on. Horses for courses, as they say. _________________
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