Fixing a background in Photoshop/Aperture/Lightroom

scolainsola

This was one of several practice shots I took, and I ended up liking it. I just wish the background would fade away and not be so obviously a bed sheet. :rofl


(sorry for the happy face, just feel weird about posting a picture of my daughter on the internet).

Pupator

Wow - your daughter has some smile!

Two general ways to do this - you can blur the background or blow it out.

If I were doing this in PSP (same as photoshop I think), I'd copy the image to a 2nd layer, and on that layer I'd select the foreground object (your daughter), then invert selection (so I now have the background selected). I'd then either do a blur effect till I got it to look the way I wanted or I would make it dark grey/black (but you could do white if you wanted.

scolainsola

Pupator wrote:

Wow - your daughter has some smile!

Two general ways to do this - you can blur the background or blow it out.

If I were doing this in PSP (same as photoshop I think), I'd copy the image to a 2nd layer, and on that layer I'd select the foreground object (your daughter), then invert selection (so I now have the background selected). I'd then either do a blur effect till I got it to look the way I wanted or I would make it dark grey/black (but you could do white if you wanted.

Thanks for the tips. If you wouldn't mind, please elaborate a little. I am pretty proficient with photoshop, but I am not quite following you on how to break-out my daughter from the background (quick selection tool?) and what good adding an additional layer does.

Walk me through the steps, if possible.

pathfinder

You can select the background with Select >Color Range. A Magic Wand can then be used to refine your selection. Hit CTRL-J to duplicate this, blur it heavily with Gaussian Blur, and then blend it with the background layer with the Opacity slider.

This will blur the edges of your daughter because the Gaussian blur will spread some beyond the edges of the selection.

Use the History Brush to paint along the edges of your daughter to restore the appearance of the edges affected by the selection and the blurring of the background. It takes about 3 minutes to achieve this....



Once you have the background selected, you can change the hue, or saturation or lightness at the same time. Or even clone in a different background from another image...

Pupator

scolainsola wrote:

Thanks for the tips. If you wouldn't mind, please elaborate a little. I am pretty proficient with photoshop, but I am not quite following you on how to break-out my daughter from the background (quick selection tool?) and what good adding an additional layer does.

Walk me through the steps, if possible.

I think Pathfinder did it for me! Let us know if you need more help.

scolainsola

pathfinder wrote:

You can select the background with Select >Color Range. A Magic Wand can then be used to refine your selection. Hit CTRL-J to duplicate this, blur it heavily with Gaussian Blur, and then blend it with the background layer with the Opacity slider.

This will blur the edges of your daughter because the Gaussian blur will spread some beyond the edges of the selection.

Use the History Brush to paint along the edges of your daughter to restore the appearance of the edges affected by the selection and the blurring of the background. It takes about 3 minutes to achieve this....



Once you have the background selected, you can change the hue, or saturation or lightness at the same time. Or even clone in a different background from another image...

Thank you SOOOO much. I had several pics that I was able to fix, thanks to you.

scolainsola

Pupator wrote:

I think Pathfinder did it for me! Let us know if you need more help.

I appreciate your help too. I do not use photoshop daily, so it really helps to get little refresher courses from people like you.

Thanks again!

jcdill

pathfinder wrote:

This will blur the edges of your daughter because the Gaussian blur will spread some beyond the edges of the selection.

Duplicate the layer, select the background, invert the selection, make a layer from the selection. Now you have a layer with your daughter only.

Select the background again, make a layer from it. Before you blur this layer, take your rubber stamp and copy the background that is not next to your daugher over the edges of the background near your daughter. This doesn't need to be done "carefully" - use a big brush and just clone away. Now blur. The newly blurred background will no longer have edges of your daughter included in the blur. Move this layer under the layer with your daughter only.

This is much easier than carefully painting with the history brush.

Also see the Advance Masking tutorial from Russell Brown, at the bottom of this page:

http://russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

jc

LiquidAir

jcdill wrote:

Duplicate the layer, select the background, invert the selection, make a layer from the selection. Now you have a layer with your daughter only.

Select the background again, make a layer from it. Before you blur this layer, take your rubber stamp and copy the background that is not next to your daugher over the edges of the background near your daughter. This doesn't need to be done "carefully" - use a big brush and just clone away. Now blur. The newly blurred background will no longer have edges of your daughter included in the blur. Move this layer under the layer with your daughter only.

This is much easier than carefully painting with the history brush.

Also see the Advance Masking tutorial from Russell Brown, at the bottom of this page:

http://russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

jc

This is how I do it when I have an interesting background I need to blur. However, for this image I'd probably just drop in a color or gradient layer and call it a day.

digismile

Don't forget the option to increase the blur at the time of capture by:

1. increasing the distance between the subject and background and,
2. opening up the aperture to decrease DOF.

Icebear

Well yeah . . .
But that requires planning and forethought, and isn't near as much fun as being able to congratulate yourself on your masterful PP skills!

pathfinder

Actually Icebear, it becomes second nature to think about blurring backgrounds 'in camera' with a larger aperture, after spending several hours doing it in front of a computer monitor because I didn't use a larger aperture:D It usually looks more believable when done in camera also.

I would rather shoot better and process less, than vice versa myself, and I suspect that is true of most of us.

BradfordBenn

You may also want to look at erasing a background...
Kind of late to the thread, but you may want to check out this podcast.

Remove a background using Photoshop CS2

Removing a background from an image is probably one of the most requested techniques in Photoshop. Luckily there are numerous ways to do it in Adobe Photoshop CS2. In this Podcast Iâll explore two ways to do it. One is pretty basic and the other one requires a little more finesse.

http://creativesuitepodcast.com/index.php?post_id=101556

LiquidAir

pathfinder wrote:

Actually Icebear, it becomes second nature to think about blurring backgrounds 'in camera' with a larger aperture, after spending several hours doing it in front of a computer monitor because I didn't use a larger aperture:D It usually looks more believable when done in camera also.

I would rather shoot better and process less, than vice versa myself, and I suspect that is true of most of us.

Certainly. However, you need to have quite a bit of distance between subject and background to adequately blur the background. When I shoot portraits, I look for spaces where I can put at least 6 feet of space behind the subject as well as 6 feet between subject and camera. However, that is often not possible. I don't like blurring backgrounds in Photoshop, but sometimes it is the best answer.