I'm working on a picture of my daughter. I created a new background and pasted her on to it. I painted some of the background in using the layer mask. This is not the finished pic. I need some help in creating the shadows around her body to give her some depth. Is there and easy way to make these shadows so that she does not look so flat on the background. I use the marquee tool to cut her out. I tried the smart lasso but did not like the results.

Any help that anyone could give would be appreciated
Thank you
Andy

Hi Andy,

Really quick job this, so with a bit of time you' should be able to improve it.

Extracted girl from original BG using Extract tool.

Copied her to new layer, filled with black using paint bucket, blurred with gaussian blur, reduced layer opacity to about 40%. Skewed and moved using Move tool.

New layer, Ctrl+click on girl layer to select her outline. Using black brush paint down LHS of body and arms, blur using gaussian blur, reduce layer opacity to 25%.

New layer and selected a eliptical vignette, select inverse, fill with black blur with Gaussian Blur, reduce opacity to about 65%.

Hope this is what you were looking for.

I quickly selected the girl with the magic wand (you already have her extracted, so I skipped spending any time on that), then applied a curve (attached) to accentuate the shadows for the depth look. Also applied color balance which also helps with depth (highlights more blue, shadows more red/yellow)

The highlights are blown on this, so it's a bit limiting.

Bart

Thank you for the help Gary. Your advice has worked out great. The only problem I have is with select new layer with "eliptical vignette". I don't know how to do that or what that is. Could you please explain a little bit more? Everything else you have said I can follow.

No problem.

Open new layer.

Use the eliptical select tool (alt+click on rectangular select tool to get it), and select a large elipse. (I usually start outside the borders of the picture).

Now click Select > Inverse. You should now have only the 4 corners of the image selected.

Use paint bucket to fill with black. You should now have an eliptical hole through which you can see the picture, surrounded with black.

Blur the layer, using a large radius Gaussian Blur (I used about 30 pix, but size of your image will determine what radius you use).

Now reduce the opacity of the layer till you get the effect you want. (I just wanted to darken the corners a little, so reduced it quite a bit).

Hope this is clear, if not let me know and I'll include some pictures to illustrate.

Thank you Gary that is what I was looking for. I now know what you are referring to. I just did not understand the term “eliptical vignette” that you used. I will post my finish photo tonight or tomorrow.

Thank you again
Andy

You're welcome, good luck with your picture.