Rock Band PIc

RWilliamson

Hey Guys!!!!!! I am stuck. I have a four member band that shot pics of a few days ago, and they are wanting me to black out everything around them to where it looks like light is shining down on them. I have tried a few times in photoshop,but no luck. Can anyone walk me through this???? I would greatl appreciate it!!!! Thanks in advance Rod

Art Scott

Can we see what your working with so we can give better advice?

Thanx

RWilliamson

This pic is one of many I have to choose from. All are outside pics. This was just the first one I cam accross

Art Scott

There are acouple of ways to get rid of the background....one is to cut them from it by outlining them with the magnetic lasso and the cutting and pasting them on a black background of the same pixel size as the original then doing a highlite around them giving a halo effect to separate from the black background....2nd option might be too use the gaussan blur tool and blur the hell out of it making it very abstract and then adding rays of light from another pic or any special effects filters you might have...but since there are shadows on parts of the pic the light rays would need to hit in the lit areas only......I would have to search for filters to do the light stuff as I do not have anything to produce that effect.....maybe hit Photoshop cafe or other photoshop forums to find out how to produce that effect if no one here has any suggestions....

Unfortunately most people have no clue as to the actual work involved to produce special effects like this.......it would have been much simpler to do in a studio situation than outdoors


Hope this helps and would like to see the finished products.

pathfinder

This kind of request is best addressed before the shooting. You could have shot them against a black wall in the shade with strong flash and already been almost done.

Now you will have to manually select the band - magnetic lasso, Pen tool or the Extract tool. Then you can paint the background black with a Brush full of black ink, and use the lighting tool to add the lighting effects you want.

Be sure to let the band know that your $50/hour fee applies to all the hours and hours you spend editing this image in addition to your shooting fee.:D

saurora

I agree with Art that it would have been much simpler to do in studio to begin with. There is a chance that after all your work spent they will still not be happy as there are issues with your cropping (her hand). These things will be more noticeable with the black BG if you can pull it off. Right now the busy BG distracts. Planning ahead and visualizing a finished image is one of the hardest things for me when shooting. I end up with a lot of "Why didn't I do this....." moments when I process!!! Good luck, and hope you post your results.

OffTopic

If reshooting isn't a possiblity, here's something you might want to try:

If you're comfortable with Photoshop, instead of trying to extract them from the existing background or paint the background pure black, you might want to try a curves adjustment layer in luminosity mode with a layer mask to darken the background as much as you want, then paint it in at various opacities until it looks realistic. Then convert to 8 bit, create a duplicate layer of your master, render lighting effects, add a layer mask, and paint in the lighting effects at an opacity(ies) that again will look realistic.

It doesn't take much time to actually do the work, but it does take a lot of time to think about how you want/need to do it. Looks fantastic when done properly. Looks horrible if you don't know what you're doing, you're sloppy or you don't understand light. Not for the meek, but might be worth giving it a try.

Good luck, and we'd love to see the results of however you accomplish this.