I had removed a picture from an old background into a new one. I had noticed that the person wearing the hat and jacket doesn't blend smoothly into the new background. It seems like the picture was pasted on top of the background instead of blending into the background. Can someone please tell me how to blend a picture into a background.

Gerald McClaren

That is really depend on the pictures, but you could try some of the standart photoshop options like feather, Layer - Matting.

I had removed a picture from an old background into a new one. I had noticed that the person wearing the hat and jacket doesn't blend smoothly into the new background. It seems like the picture was pasted on top of the background instead of blending into the background. Can someone please tell me how to blend a picture into a background.

Gerald McClaren

Hi Gerald. Please post whatever it is you have. If you only have the final result pasted into the new background the solution will be different than if you still have the original picture on the original background.

Bart

This is my original picture.

Gerald McClaren

This is my finish product. The hat and jacket doesn't blend in with the background.

Gerald McClaren

What usually works for me is to select the figure, then select-modify- contract(4+ pixels), Then select- invert so background with figure outline is selcted. Then apply a Gaussian blur.
Sometimes, just running the blur tool over the areas is sufficient.
Hope this helps - MargaretM

I would use the path tool to make an accurate selection of your figure and feather it by 1 pixel and paste it into its own layer. (I have recently learned that 1 pixel selections are the magic number for making most selections for stripping in to be realistic.) Then I would try to do something subtle to the background to give it depth. Maybe a very slight lighting effect.

Is the original blurry around the hat? If so, this may or may not help...

Paste the selection into its own layer.

Make sure your figure is still selected and that the feathering is set to 1 pixel.

Make sure your background is in contrast to the figure, so you can see your edges.

Use the rubber stamp tool and a small feathered brush to fill in the areas where the edges blurred into the background.

Hope that helps.

-LF

I agree with what the other posters said plus I think his hat has been flattened to the point that the shading/contours are gone. Try to keep the hat contours.

Bart

I just practiced what I preached and came up with this. I also noticed that some of the original detail in his hat is gone. There is a shadow under the brim that makes it look more 3 dimensional. I put that back in this way...

1. Select the figure (feather 1 pixel).

2. Using the color picker, select a darker color from the image.

3. Using the paint brush, set it to Color Burn under brush mode up top and burn in where the shadow used to be. (I lowered the opacity of the brush and gave a few broad swipes over the area, not worrying about his face or other details.)

4. Deselect the figure.

5. Using the history brush, I blended the shadow in.

Hi There

It looks good to me, but the image is so small I can not really tell the problem.

I wrote a tutorial for defringing that may help. It is made for Elements... to cheap for CS2 :tongue: Maybe it will help in the future

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6689&highlight=defringe

Butch

Hi Gerald,

Aside from the suggestions above, try adding noise on the background to match your foreground image.