How do i put baby on bed of roses??

Hi all!

just had a baby girl (seems like baby boom on dpreview??!!) and i was wondering if someone can help me to merge a photo of Baby Milla onto a background of rose petals?

I have managed to cut out the baby, but just cannot get a smooth combination of the two: i dont get the feathering right, the baby seems to just be glued cruedly on top of petals and not merged into the picture, and her skin is typical new born: red and not very smooth looking! If someone can give me a few practical hints on how to proceed i would appreciate it!

so this is baby:



and this is background:



Thank you!
Anne

Extraction is not smooth enough around edges and the bed of roses should be shot from the same angle, else she will not appear to be sleeping on a bed of roses. gc

Hey gc when i did the selection of the baby i feathered it w 2 pixels white. Is there a better way?
thanx
Anne

by shooting the roses a at the same angle you wil not need to extract

just put the roses over the baby reduce opacity and erase the roses outlining the petals and let the baby show through. this way the baby will look like it is in the rose petals

Why not just get some rose petals from wal-mart, (yup they sell imitation rose pedals) place them on whatever backdrop you want, and place baby on rose petals, take portrait?

smart object warping could be used for correct angle of the petals but again they would look too flat like a carpet or poster

also match color might be a good idea to place the baby on top of the roses so they would look like they were shot under the same light

if a photo of rose petals taken from different angles is available, placing them one by one and covering some parts of the baby where they touch the ground can be a good camouflage for a so so extraction. It would also give some feeling of thickness and richness to the bed of roses.

my $0.02

Did pretty quickly so it can be cleaned up considerably:

the only way to get this right would be to buy a BUNCH of roses, rip the petals, put them on a table or something and shoot them at the same angle you shot the baby at.

In order to get it right given the angle you've established you would need A LOT of roses (well... I suppose you could use some digital trickery to duplicate them somewhat (vanishing point anyone?) and a lot of confidence that you got the angle right.

Once you have the shot (digitally enhanced or not) of the background of roses you would duplicate it and sandwich baby between two copies. the lower one will be the background and the top one you'd use to make the roses go over the edge of baby where the roses are in front of her.

Big project you're looking to undertake.

My recommendations in order of increasing difficulty are:

1. fill baby's bassinette with real or fake rose petals, place baby in them while she's sleeping and reshoot.

2. fill baby's bassinette with real rose petals and shoot them from a high angle. mark where you were when you shot the photo and what lens etc. you used. Then shoot baby in basinette from same angle... and compose

3. forget about roses altogether... pick something else that you can actually, easily photograph. I dunno... baby on grass? baby on sand? then compose

4. go with your initial plan

if you're not too picky...

...if you accept that the end result will look like it was a montage...

... if you can accept multicolored roses rather than the red ones...

then maybe this would work:



here's how I made this:

found a photo of rose petals on morguefile which was significantly larger than the one you provided (and had a lot more petals)

used the perspective transformation on it and skewed it to fit the visual perspective I saw in the baby photo

extracted the baby roughly from your extraction and positioned her on the petals, looking for petals that I could use as foreground "make believe this is really real" material.

Created a couple of multiply layers and painted in deep red to create some fake shadows on the petals, to sell the 3d look a little (I know it doesn't really look real, but it's better than the original perspective only thing )

duplicated the flowers in front of the baby and hid them

re-extracted the baby, this time with some care... corrected some hair extraction issues, and used pen tool to unflattify the butt extraction

applied the baby's mask, reversed to the foreground flowers image, then painted in the mask to make a couple of key petals end up in front of the baby (the red one I decided would be her head support and the white one would be her blanket). This was much easier than I anticipated... flipping between black and white I was able to get this the way I wanted it in a couple of minutes.

next created a color burn blank layer right over the baby and with a small brush created the contact shadow along her fingers and arm and the blanky shadow along her thigh

next created two multiply layers above the baby and used them to create the shadow the red petal casts on her face. Please note that this is NOT correct from a lighting standpoint, I've taken it out and put it back and taken it out and put it back, and taken it out, and finally put it back because I decided that while INCORRECT, it sells the fakery better for me.

finally created a colorbalance layer over the baby to remove the newborn magenta cast.

it was fun.

I'm glad I said it shouldn't be done in my previous reply.... I find this to be a leading theme in my life... I explain in detail why something really shouldn't be done... and then I do it anyway

Alessandro

Hi Anne,

I couldn't get the rose bed to look right. If you posted the orig image it may be easier to get a different extraction to work with.
Here is a High Key attempt with neat image to soften it up as well.



I also liked the retouch that Gordon SW did with the rose bed and ran it through neat image



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ckb
visit my sites at http://www.photographybychris.net
and at http://www.pbase.com/ckb

Gordon,

Nice work on the bed of flower petals. I hope you don't mind I modified your image and ran it through neat image. I liked the soft effect along with your retouch.



I will remove if you wish.
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ckb
visit my sites at http://www.photographybychris.net
and at http://www.pbase.com/ckb

... no problem with revising my attempts. I always look at these postings on the retouch forum as learning experiences. 8^)

I usually only have time to do a quick retouch so leave much refining unfinished and as you know retouching of an image never seems to have an end. ;^)

Appreciate your efforts.

when a studio does a shot of a kid / baby on rose petals they use a mat that has roses and/or petals sewn to it. these can be purchased online, try googling studio props. they are expensive, but may be the best way to go for a project like this.
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c8h10n4o2
http://www.anthonyphotos.com

Hey Chris - the high key one is really really sweet! Thank you for this idea!
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Pyrst

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home.woh.rr.com/chadtyree