Could use your help with this photo...

A friend invited me to her family reunion to take family photos. Of course, I am by no means a professional and only had a bed sheet to use as a backdrop. It actually worked great for most of the photos, and I didn't have to do much work to them afterwards (other than clone out some wrinkles in the fabric) However, in the following photo, the backdrop was desparately too small, so I am cloning it in. The 2nd photo shows my results so far.

The one area I am having a problem with is where the backdrop meets the floor. I want it to look natural. Should I take the baseboard out or leave it in? What would be the best way to work around this?

Please feel free to play around with this. I would love to see what you would do....plus detailed instructions, please

I thought of changing the background completely, but am already half done this series of photos (over 100!) and think it would be time consuming to go back and redo the other ones. I think they also want the backgrounds to be "consistent", so I want to stick with the same backgrounds for all the photos.

Thanks.

Weezie :0)

Here is the untouched photo........



This one shows my work so far...........

Have you got a bigger version of this file - seems a waste to work on such a low res image when i could fix the real thing for you!
S

--
Simon Joinson Editor, Total Digital Photography, London UK
http://www.totaldp.com

weezie said:

This one shows my work so far...........

Click to expand...

That's a lot of work. Since you have so many shots, the only reasonable thing to do is to crop out everyone outside of the backdrop. There's a lot of people in that family, and they'll never miss a few. Besides, if they were important people, they would have put them in the middle .



Btw, I recognized some of those people, and then realized I had worked on a shot of them about 10 days ago when you posted the identical request!

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=8095544

--
Warm regards, Uncle Frank,
FCAS Charter Member, Hummingbird Hunter
Gallery at http://www.pbase.com/unclefrank/coolpix

weezie said:

A friend invited me to her family reunion to take family photos. Of
course, I am by no means a professional and only had a bed sheet to
use as a backdrop. It actually worked great for most of the photos,
and I didn't have to do much work to them afterwards (other than
clone out some wrinkles in the fabric) However, in the following
photo, the backdrop was desparately too small, so I am cloning it
in. The 2nd photo shows my results so far.
The one area I am having a problem with is where the backdrop meets
the floor. I want it to look natural. Should I take the baseboard
out or leave it in? What would be the best way to work around this?
Please feel free to play around with this. I would love to see what
you would do....plus detailed instructions, please
I thought of changing the background completely, but am already
half done this series of photos (over 100!) and think it would be
time consuming to go back and redo the other ones. I think they
also want the backgrounds to be "consistent", so I want to stick
with the same backgrounds for all the photos.

Thanks.

Weezie :0)

Here is the untouched photo........



This one shows my work so far...........

Click to expand...

I would start by making a background file, using that backdrop resampled to the desired size (if you really like it), or starting with any image you like.

Then use the Extract filter in Photoshop or whatever other selection tool you have available (you did not tell us which software you use), and remove the background from each image, and copy the people as a new layer on to your chosen background.

The Extract tool can work fairly quickly unless you want a very high quality result, in which case it can be rather laborious to get the edges just right.

--
http://www.pbase.com/bertramm
pbase & dpreview supporter
Dimage A2, TCON-17, Canon s50, Epsom 3200 scanner, HP 2500 printer
Photoshop CS, Qimage, ACDSee

huge file here, or should I email it to you?

Thanks!

Weezie :0)

sjoinson said:

Have you got a bigger version of this file - seems a waste to work
on such a low res image when i could fix the real thing for you!
S

--
Simon Joinson Editor, Total Digital Photography, London UK
http://www.totaldp.com

Click to expand...

Uncle Frank said:

Uncle Frank said:

This one shows my work so far...........

Click to expand...

That's a lot of work. Since you have so many shots, the only
reasonable thing to do is to crop out everyone outside of the
backdrop. There's a lot of people in that family, and they'll
never miss a few. Besides, if they were important people, they
would have put them in the middle .

Click to expand...

Actually, although I do have a lot of shots, there is only one of this particular group. My friend had me do various shots of the family (individuals, different groupings, 4 generations shots, couples, children, etc). Several people have ordered a copy of this photo, so I think they would miss them if I cut a few of them out At the time, I realized that my backdrop was small and wouldn't work for several of the shots (some of the shots have even more people in them than this one), but didn't know what else to do. I decided I would try to fix it later if I could.

Uncle Frank said:

Btw, I recognized some of those people, and then realized I had
worked on a shot of them about 10 days ago when you posted the
identical request!

Click to expand...

You are right, this is a similar shot to the one I posted the other day! However, the question I asked the other day was about how to take out the background and put in a completely different one. Since then I have decided to keep the existing background because I have already worked on over 50 of the other photos using the same background, and the family would like the backgrounds to be consistent with all the shots. In 95% of the other photos, the background wasn't a problem at all (other than a few wrinkles that needed to be cloned out), so I would like to fix this one to "match" the rest. The only trouble I am having is where the backdrop meets the floor. If I make the whole thing blue, then I think it would look funny because some of their feet are showing in the photo. If I try to crop off their feet, it also looks funny.

Uncle Frank said:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=8095544

--
Warm regards, Uncle Frank,
FCAS Charter Member, Hummingbird Hunter
Gallery at http://www.pbase.com/unclefrank/coolpix

Click to expand...

Thanks so much for your reply.

extract tool and masking tools to change the background, but am not having much luck. Time is a factor and I have to get these photos out in a hurry, so I haven't had much time to play with the tools. I will work on it later, but don't really have the time with these photos yet.

My main concern here was not with changing the whole background (I think the clone tool worked fairly ok for this). Instead, I wanted to know what to do with the sections that show where the backdrop meets the floor. If I make the whole thing blue, including the floor, I think it looks funny because their feet are showing and they need something to "stand" on. However, if I crop their feet out, then I think it looks too tightly cropped and unbalanced.

Thanks again.

Weezie :0)

engbert said:

weezie said:

A friend invited me to her family reunion to take family photos. Of
course, I am by no means a professional and only had a bed sheet to
use as a backdrop. It actually worked great for most of the photos,
and I didn't have to do much work to them afterwards (other than
clone out some wrinkles in the fabric) However, in the following
photo, the backdrop was desparately too small, so I am cloning it
in. The 2nd photo shows my results so far.
The one area I am having a problem with is where the backdrop meets
the floor. I want it to look natural. Should I take the baseboard
out or leave it in? What would be the best way to work around this?
Please feel free to play around with this. I would love to see what
you would do....plus detailed instructions, please
I thought of changing the background completely, but am already
half done this series of photos (over 100!) and think it would be
time consuming to go back and redo the other ones. I think they
also want the backgrounds to be "consistent", so I want to stick
with the same backgrounds for all the photos.

Thanks.

Weezie :0)

Here is the untouched photo........



This one shows my work so far...........

Click to expand...

I would start by making a background file, using that backdrop
resampled to the desired size (if you really like it), or starting
with any image you like.

Then use the Extract filter in Photoshop or whatever other
selection tool you have available (you did not tell us which
software you use), and remove the background from each image, and
copy the people as a new layer on to your chosen background.

The Extract tool can work fairly quickly unless you want a very
high quality result, in which case it can be rather laborious to
get the edges just right.

--
http://www.pbase.com/bertramm
pbase & dpreview supporter
Dimage A2, TCON-17, Canon s50, Epsom 3200 scanner, HP 2500 printer
Photoshop CS, Qimage, ACDSee

Click to expand...

Perhaps if you made the floor the same color as the background, it would give the illusion of a continuous backdrop. Because the floor color is pretty distinctive, you should be able to use the magic wand to select most of it, and then maybe go in a touch up a few areas. I also changed the color of the background (personal preference) as I thought the color was very strong and sort of grabbed the attention away from the people.



Original:

weezie said:

Click to expand...

--
Vikki Hansen
http://www.lifetimephoto.com
http://www.pbase.com/vhansen/galleries

How did you change the colour? Sorry for being such a novice. I think what you did looks great! How did you change the colour of the actual background without losing the texture, and how did you change the floor colour... and espcially, how did you make it darker so it looks like it has the right perspective?

Thanks!

Weezie :0)

Vikki Hansen said:

Original:

Vikki Hansen said:

Click to expand...

--
Vikki Hansen
http://www.lifetimephoto.com
http://www.pbase.com/vhansen/galleries

Click to expand...

You can use "Replace" color to change the color. Just click on the background and adjust the sliders. You have to experiment. I used the magic wand to select the floor, added a transparent layer set to "color" and then filled it with the color. I don't think I made it darker. Just changing the color keeps all the shadows, highlights, etc.

weezie said:

Thanks!

Weezie :0)

Vikki Hansen said:

Original:

weezie said:

Click to expand...

--
Vikki Hansen
http://www.lifetimephoto.com
http://www.pbase.com/vhansen/galleries

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
Vikki Hansen
http://www.lifetimephoto.com
http://www.pbase.com/vhansen/galleries