Huge Challenge Ahead

Ann McRae

I have three basketball team photos, and each team had at least two members miss the first shoot. I did a second shoot. Unfortunately, I set the precedent last year of making a composite team photo adding in the other players. Expectations are that I will do so again this year, but the lighting is drastically different. To complicate matters, I had a pretty big brain fart when I set the kids up, and I didn't shoot each one alone. To really complicate matters, I have switched editing programs, and don't know my way around PSCS3 well enough yet!
So I've read the threads in the sticky that are relevant. Any advice? Tips to make this 'dead-easy'?

Thanks

ann

Hugo

If you provide me with the pictures, I could have a try and make it for you, and make a little tutorial also.

Ann McRae

Okay, I took the time to work on this today.
The thing that strikes me, beside the obvious difference in brightness between the original and the two that I have added, is the overall color. This was adjusted using the skin tone tute, and the skin tones are good as far as Y,M and C are concerned. However I think the resulting image is overall far too green now. Anyway, I did not find an elegant way to do this - just select, copy-paste, and erase. Learned where more controls are in doing so.

Kelby has a tutorial in his CS3 book that involves the clone stamp, but I wasn't able to effectively remove the girls from the background.

DavidTO

Try

Image>Adjustments>Match Color

Ann McRae

DavidTO wrote:

Try

Image>Adjustments>Match Color

Ahhh! Excellent. Thank you.

I did that on the merged image - cuz I don't think I've saved an unmerged completed one - can this be done on an unmerged image, or am I correct in thinking then it would only get applied to one layer?

Anyway, that seemed to help with the overall difference in brightness, but threw the Y,M, C balance off again so I redid that. This is the result:


I don't see doing more edting to this image except for learning purposes, but do have two more composite team photos to make so any more help is truely appreciated.

Thanks again, David

ann

DavidTO

I would use it to match colors before merging. Match the new image to the old one first, then paste it in.

Ann McRae

DavidTO wrote:

I would use it to match colors before merging. Match the new image to the old one first, then paste it in.

Yep, that makes sense - but can you back up to beginner level - open both images and then .....

Thanks David.
ann

DavidTO

Ann McRae wrote:

Yep, that makes sense - but can you back up to beginner level - open both images and then .....

Thanks David.
ann

JFriend links to a tute, here.

Ann McRae

Excellent. Thank You.

DavidTO wrote:

JFriend links to a tute, here.

LittleLew

It looks like the hair extraction on the two additions is a little awkward and it stands out some.

pyrtek

LittleLew wrote:

It looks like the hair extraction on the two additions is a little awkward and it stands out some.

I agree. A little bit of blurring around the hairline makes it less noticeable:





Still not perfect, though.

Ann McRae

Well, I sat down and got them done today, and learned a whole lot about photoshop functions while doing so.

I think the blur brush is my new best friend! And working on the big screens is really, really nice.

Next challenge is to figure the desk/chair/ mouse height out properly because my arm is killing me!

ann