replaced background critique

[smiley guy]

Just finished a freebie for my sister. She got married recently and these are her daughters who stood up at the wedding. She asked me to "do something" with the background. After a couple of artsy attempts I discovered it actually boiled down to a total replacement. This was my attempt and would like to get some feed back on it.

My own critique is mostly about the matching of the shadows. I know the lighting in the photo of the girls does not match the photo of the lane. I tried a couple of things with saturation adjustment etc. in each photo masked independently. That seemed to help but I don't know how it could ever match exactly given the two diverse origins of the separate photos.

Also wanted some comments on the shadows of the girls. Realistic? Does it look like they're walking on a country lane?

Your help is much appreciated.

[Panpan]

Hi

They were photographed in shadow and they would make very diffuse shadows themselves.

Instead of making shadows for them, I would extend the shadow in the foreground to cover the sunlight patch at their feet.

Pierre

[twinkissed]

The one thing I noticed is the girl on the left of the photo has a halo effect around her hair and also down by her side there is a patch ove the shadow. I think with a little more tweaking it's going to make a really really cute picture.

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Smiley Guy,

The background picture has a very deep depth of field, which is not compatible with a shot where the focus would have been on the girls.

So I duped the image, blurred with Gaussian Blur, masked with a graduated mask, then further masked the two girls. Finally adjusted layer opacity to get a blur that I thought looked right.

Very quick job, used to illustrate concept only, take a little more time and you should get better results.

[smiley guy]

Thanks for the comments, all!

Panpan, with all due respect, in the original photo of the girl they were photohraphed in shadow but when putting in the new bg there are different shadows which is why I added some. I think diffuse shadow at their feet would not fit with the new bg, looking at the shadows falling from the rail fence.

Twinkissed: yeah, that halo and some stuff down the left side of her. No excuse for that even if it is a freebie! The halo I found tricky because there are some stray hairs up there in the original and I didn't want her hair to look to flat. I tried.

Gary, good idea, I'll try that. I have been experimenting with that a bit lately on some other photos and can easily do it on this one. Thanks for the idea.

[Duv]

In addition to Gary's comments, I think some low horizon omni light rendering on her right side may add something to the realism. You could also try some lighting on the girl to the left although the case could be made that she is shadowed by the other lady.

Cheers

Dave

[smiley guy]

Nice touch, Dave. If you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you do that?

[Duv]

You can apply the Lighting Effects on the extracted figures. If you want a bit of lighting on the girl on the left just copy her onto a new layer and apply the effect again.

Cheers

Dave

[Gary Richardson]

Nice one Dave, looks good.

[kschulz]

Duv - great idea on the lighting!

Gary - you're right on with the depth of field, but the blur doesn't look quite right to me...looks more like motion blur

My only other comment is regrarding the shadows coming off the girls. They seem just a tad too strong, and my eye is drawn to them. Maybe a little softer with more opacity.

All in all, a very nice picture!

- Kurt

[Gary Richardson]

It's actually Gaussian Blur, as I said in the earlier post, it's just a quick job meant to illustrate concept, rather than a finished picture.

As I only use PS7, it's all I've got. For those with CS or CS2, use Photo Blur, and you should get better results.

[Duv]

The shadows are a very important detail. As it is one light source (the sun), the shadows should have the same lightness and color as surrounding shadows. In this case the shadows need to be dodged and the blue component increased. It would be easier to rebuild the shadows from scratch.

Cheers

Dave

[Kraellin]

one other comment i didnt see mentioned here... the saturation and contrast dont match up either. on the girl's it looks like sun filtering was done, where on the lane, no filtering, thus the difference in polarizations and contrast.

Craig

[Duv]

Craig, good observation. I just don't know how you would adjust it. I brightened the girls in mine but the reality was that they were shot in diffuse light. So how do you realisticly give them the hard light look ie, hard shadows under their arms and bodies, contrasty light on the folds of the dresses, etc? Also, do you have some more thoughts on the variations you see in Saturation. Not exactly sure I was understanding that part.

Cheers

Dave

[Kraellin]

dave,

well, you've already corrected what i was talking about to a great extent in your current attachment. since the image of the girls is a cutout, then i would have either lowered the contrast on them, or raised the contrast on the background. that probably would have covered most of what i was talking about since higher 'contrast' tends to add a bit of saturation.

nicely done!

Craig