Over memorial day my dad gave me this old picture of his mom and dad and his two brothers and wanted it turned into a picture of just his mom and dad. I'm thinking it'd be pointless to leave the pair standing in a random corner and that a plain background would work just as well. I've been trying to do that but they feel kind of "cut and paste" to me. I tried blurring the edges more, but that makes it feel worse. Any suggestions on how to make the newly added background feel real and natural??

before and after (http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/8851/sgrandmagrandpaedited9wa.jpg)

Photoshop, how do I put thumbnails in my posts? :bawling:

I took your "after" image and did two real basic things--moved the couple closer together and put in a new background. If you have a background from the same day with the same lighting, it'll automatically look natural. If you have a foreign background (such as the one I used), you'll need to apply curves/photo filters/color balance and so on to get the tones of the people and new background to match.

I did a real quick-n-sloppy job just to illustrate.

Bart

Here is something that worked for me a couple of times.
Try: Extract the couple and set as layer (transparent), select transparent pixels, switch to 'inverse selection' in the menu, then create layer mask-show, 'select all' on layer mask(you should have a white mask of your figures on black back), add gaussian blur (I used about 5.0 blur on your jpeg example). Hide mask (btw alt-click or opt-click for mac). Your image will look faded out around the edges, that's ok. Put in the background image of your choice in a new layer beneath and tweak size till it looks right( I chose to plonk them in Europe somewhere- no special reason). Select your layer mask again (no alt/opt) select levels under Image=>Adjustments and experiment with the adjustment sliders until you are happy with the edge result. I did this much to your image so it still needs fine tweaking etc... hope this helps you.
Cheers

Well I was talking to my dad and he wanted to see if could put his mom and dad on a portrait type of backdrop, so here's what I came up with. Lemme know what you think.

Image (http://img433.imageshack.us/img433/8246/formari0kj.jpg)

You might need to cast a shadow on your background.

Hi Justin

I think you did a good job of removing them from the original picture and I see you followed Bart's advice about moving them closer together.

To me however I think the informality of the picture would make it better suited for a closer presentation

Butch

I didn't know about the backdrop