Hi everyone,
I'd like to make a scrapbook of college photos, and would like to include this one of Matt. However, the huge liquid spill on his t-shirt needs to go... and I have no idea how to remove it.

Also, this isn't terribly important, but is it possible to change the bottle of beer in his hand to, say, one of the bottles pictured at http://www.jonessodastore.com/files/jus-101.html? It'd be nice to show the scrapbook to my family.

I attached a copy of the pic... does anyone think they can help, with at least the liquid stain?

Thanks so much,
Jen

Firstly, the photo as you posted it is really badly jpeg compressed -- it's only 35K and the compression has affected the results you can get out of it. If you have a less-compressed (and ideally higher-resolution, as well) shot then it will be much easier to work with.

Secondly, ideally I wouldn't try to include one of the bottles from the website. They are shot under very different conditions and it's tricky to incorporate them into a photo like this. Ideally shooting a bottle under similar conditions and potentially with the same camera would be a good way to go.

Anyway, here's my best shot working with what we had. The stain was easy but I'm not at all happy with the bottle.

Quick and dirty fixes :)

- Noel

OMG, those edits are incredible!!!!! I thought it was impossible to get the spill out of Matt's t-shirt... I'm so impressed! You can't even tell there was a spill.

May I ask for detailed instructions on how to do both? The explicit process you used, if it isn't too much trouble? I've got some messy friends, and also some alcoholics who love to pose holding up their bottles, so both tips would greatly come in handly for the rest of this batch, and for the next 3 years of my college experience, lol.

Thanks so much, again!!!

Jen

The t-shirt is basically using the clone brush to clean up the stain, then I used the healing brush to add some dimension back.

The bottle, I cut the label off another bottle, and then using a layer mask put it on the first bottle.

If you would like more detail, let me know :)

- Noel

The stain, I just made a copy of the existing T-shirt on a new layer, dragged it so that the undamaged area of that layer covered the stain on the background layer, added a Hide All layer mask and then brushed in over the stain with white on the mask. Then repeated the process as there wasn't quite enough T-shirt to cover all of the stain.

My version of the bottle I copied the fingers onto a new layer at the top of the layer stack and then put the bottle on a layer between the main image and the fingers. Had to do some Levels and Curves tweaking to try to make it blend in but I don't remember what exactly. I think changing the label is probably a better way to go in this shot.

Wow guys, thank you so much! I'm using Noel's cleaning-up technique, and now all my friends have crisp, spotless clothing that looks fresh out of the wash. :)

Anyway, as far as the bottle goes, I really liked Leah's placing of the root beer bottle in Matt's hand. I don't think it looks unnatural at all, and blends in perfectly. The picture was actually cut in half - on the left-hand side was Jeff, tilting a bottle up and singing along to Garth's "Friends In Low Places." I'm going to attempt to switch the bottle with another Jones's bottle. However, I'm confused about one of the most elementary things - selecting particular objects.

I saved a blue bottle from the website (picture enclosed), and need to select only the bottle, not the entire square around it. What tool do I use? Also, you said you duplicated only the fingers on a different layer - how do you select only the fingers for a new layer?

Also, I'll need to rotate the blue soda bottle to match the real one Jeff had. My search in Photoshop 7.0 Help said the 3D Transform filter is the way to go - did I come across the right tool?

I'm sorry for such basic questions... I did search in Photoshop, and the tutorials on this website. Unfortunately, both seemed to have more advanced topics than that.

Thanks (again)
Jen

Jen, you're funny. (She's only kidding, people...)

To select the bottle you can trace it with one of the selection tools, then cut and paste it into the picture of Matt. Then hit Ctrl+T and free transform the bottle to make it fit in his hand. Forget about the 3D transform filter.

Mig

Nice addition in the background there :)

- Noel

Hi Mig,
I got a kick out of your additions also. Made me giggle

W.Rose (Wayne)

Hi Jen,
I took a go at your photo. Did pretty much as the others.
For the shirt i used the clone tool to get rid of the stain.
Extracted the bottle
Then i used a layer mask to wrap his fingers back around the bottle
Hope we have helped you. You can do this Jen
W. Rose (Wayne)

Hee Mig, nice magazine and picture : )

Thank you also for explaining the most basic things to me, like free transform and lasso tool.

I'm giving Matt's roommate a bottle makeover, too. This is what I've got so far - the bottle in, twisted at the right degree, at the precise size needed. However, I'm having difficulty shaping the bottle to fit the one in Jeff's hand. I tried using the Polygonal Lasso tool to cut Jeff's out, paste it over the blue soda bottle, and trace the precvise shape in... but Photoshop won't let me cut Jeff's bottle. It says it can't cut because the "selected portion is empty." Gah. Am I going about this incorrectly? I'll look into layer masks, too - thanks W. Rose!! :)

On a lighter note, why is it that when I add the bottle in, and click save, it won't save as a JPEG file? It creates a new file in PSD format, which I doubt Target can develop like a JPEG file.

Thanks again - this board is incredible.

Jen

Jen, don't worry about cutting his fingers out, just place the new bottle over the old one, turn down the opacity where you can see the shape of the old one and then place it where you want it. You will be able to see the exact size. Add a layers mask and paint back the fingers.
When your saving the photo, click the down arrow where the PSD format is showing and save as JPEG.
I don't know if i explained this very well, if not let me know.

W. Rose (Wayne)

Do Save As or Save for Web and you can save as JPEG. But always use the highest JPEG quality -- and also do all your work saving as PSD and only convert to JPEG when you are done and ready to print.

Jeff is grasping the bottle with his whole fist, though, and creates a split in the bottle... plus his arm blocks off half of the bottle... whereas Matt was just gently holding it with a few fingers.

Is there a way to trace Jeff's bottle onto the new bottle, to get an exact replica?

Edited to add: I put the bottle over Jeff's, clicked Mask Layer, and then wasn't sure how to "paint" the fingers back. I clicked the paint tool, and thought painting over the general area where the hand is would miraculously bring that portion up from the original unmaskerd layer.

So I tried cutting Jeff's hand - but it told me (again) the selected area was empty.

Ugh, from now on, if I want to have a Jones soda bottle in a pic, the people who I'm taking the pic of will be holding a Jones soda bottle.

If you can post a pic with the jones bottle not floating by the shirt, I can try to do something with it :)

- Noel

Thanks Noel!!!

I edited a ton of my photos today (once I whitened somebody's teeth, the person NEXT to them looked like they needed a box of digi-Crest Strips... repeat this with all the other touch-ups you can think of, lol) and promise this is my final touch-up before I burn every photo to disc and have Target develop them all.

Are there any books you guys recommend? Scott Kelby's name sure comes up a lot on amazon.com. Or, do you know of any tutorial websites with photos, that teach you how to do cool stuff such as movie posters, etc.? Or do you just prefer the old-fashioned wasy of exploring and trying out? :pleased:

Anyway, thank you so much, everyone - it's really nice of you to take the time & effort to help me.

Jen

Jen,
Move the bottle into position and add a layer mask to the bottle layer. Turn down the opacity so you can see and paint his hand back in.
Turn down the opacity so it matches the rest of the photo.
W.Rose (Wayne)

Wow, what incredible instructions!! I followed them exactly, and had the bottles swapped in two minutes flat... it seemed like a year-long challenge just an hour ago. Thanks : )

Jen

The above is basically what I would have done :)

- Noel

the stain edits look fine to me but the bottles look off
ill take a shot at it just for kicks later tonight
but for now i have to prime my stupid bathroom

eh forget my try
ill just point out what looks wrong with the bottles
1. the caps are on the bottles still, looks off
2. the liquid in the bottle isnt level as it should be, should be slanted to be parallel with the ground
3. the blue bottle is a bit too bright and looks fake, while the other bottle is a bit too dark
4. the reflections on the bottles are off, making it look... well.... off

I had a go at this cos the bottles were still not looking right on the other tries I had seen, they're not blending right, the colour of the liquid in the bottle is very bright because it was photohgraphed on a white background with very strong lighting.
In breif - the first thing I did was removed the old bottle with the clone tool, did this very quickly and roughly because the new bottle would go on top.
I made 3 copies of the bottle after I had trimmed the white space.
The first layer I set as an overlay so that the colour of his hand and the cupboard behind him showed through, but it was too much so the next layer was set to 50% opacity, the glass off the bottle looked much better but the label and bottle top were also looking glassy so with the third layer I masked the top and label back in.
Then I added a 50% grey overlay layer and added some dark grey over the bottle to darken it because it was still too bright.
Its still not perfect but I think it looks much better, you can see the tonal change where his hand is through the bottle.