I have this pic http://www.silverscreencreations.co...vette_small.psd (last pic in thumbnail)

which I quick masked the car and the person at least mostly except around the head and under the door where I cound't tell where the door ends.


1. What is the best way to go about finishing the quick mask / extraction?

2. I have posted some pics below of "sample backgrounds" I would like to create something like those or a cross between them to put the car into...what do you guys think?

Are you wanting to select just the car, or the car and man together.

If the former, then the pen tool is the best for doing selections on hard edged geometrical forms, as it will give a much cleaner outline than using other methods, and being vector based will resize without losing that clean edge.

If the latter, a combination of pen and quick mask should give good results.

You could try using the extract tool, there is probably sufficient contrast between car and background to get a reasonable extraction. Clean up edges of your extraction using a combination of eraser and history brush.

Alternately, you could do a quick loose selection around the whole thing, paste to your new background, then apply a layer mask to your pasted selection, to get rid of unwanted areas. The advantage here, is that you can add to, or subtract from the mask, simply by painting on it. Black to mask, white to reveal.

Hope this helps a little.

Thanks Gary, it helps... I want to extract the man and car... I already did a fairly good job with the quick mask but left some edges around the head to make room for the hair's etc. So I will probably just end up then using layer mask once I find a good background....


What do you guys think I should use as a background (it doesn't have to be one of the ones that I posted).

Don't know about backgrounds, will have to have a look around and see if I can find something, but something just occurred to me.

Did you keep the shadow area under the car with your selection, because it may be useful to do so, to help it sit into any new background you choose.

The texture of the road will not fit into the new scene, but it will give you the outline, density and position for your new shadow, consistent with the lighting on the car.

no I didn't but I can just add it to the mask....


its really the background that i'm concerned with now. I would like to get something that would look good printed, IE corbis, Getty etc, but I have briefly looked and couldn't find anything.

Something else has just occurred to me. It's nothing to do with backgrounds unfortunately.

Its just that I've noticed the windscreen (windshield) on your source picture has a strong reflection of the tree behind, so you'll either need a background with trees, or to remove the glass and replace with some from another image.

Same applies to the reflections on the bonnet (hood) to a lesser extent.

Don't know why I didn't see that straight away, classic case of not seeing the wood for the trees I guess.

Will get back to you on the background if I have any success finding anything.

Alright that would be great...


I also thought about the reflections, but havent figured out how to tackle them yet, I guess the best thing would be to find a background then edit the reflections if needed

and dont forget the driver's side window where the bushes are showing through the glass there.

as for backgrounds, this is going to be a matter of taste. you can go for simple, high contrast, a gradient of grays might work well with that cobalt blue. and lighting is going to be somewhat important also, especially dependent on how you handle the natural shadows of the existing image.

lighting effects can range from all sorts of things like backlighting, highlighting, beam, reflected, side, front and so on. and again, this is going to be up to you as to what effect you wish to create.

also, by keeping the gentleman in the picture, this is going to give you two focuses for your picture, the car and the man. do you want to bring one out as more important or keep them of relatively the same importance or what?

Craig

relatively the same importance.

I would love to see examples of any backgrounds ...