merging two photos

[Sanda]

I've been asked to combine two photos and make it look as if the three people were in the original photo.
I'm having trouble with one area in particular and would like your opinions as to what I should do with it. The main trouble area is maked. Please let me know what you think I should do.
I've posted both the photos and what I have done so far.
Thanks
Sandra

Opps

[Sanda]

try again

[Sanda]

the originals

[Ed_L]

Sandra,

Couldn't you use the transform option to straighten out the inserted woman? Then maybe you could place her in a slightly different position so she doesn't appear to have two arms. You might even try moving her to the other side. Just my first thoughts.

Ed

[Ed_L]

Another possibility. This was a real quick fix, but I'm sure you know what to do with it.

Ed

[jeaniesa]

Hmmmm - I like what you've done, but I do understand what you're not happy with. I like repositioning like Ed did, but I would try to take it a step further. To be honest, I don't know if this is even possible - haven't tried it myself and I'm too tired right now. Perhaps in the morning...

Anyway, what I would try would be to reposition the arm of the girl in the back to wrap around the woman's neck. If you put the woman on the left, then somehow you need to drop the girl's shoulder and reposition the arm so that it goes behind the woman's neck with the forearm down in front. This may not be possible to do and still have the photo look natural though. Just seems like if it really were a group shot that the girl in the back would be hugging both people - not just one.

Sorry to offer a suggestion which I haven't had a chance to try yet. Good luck!

Jeanie

[DannyRaphael]

I like Jeanie's suggestion. Her comment about having an arm around each person seems like a natural thing to do.

But I cringed a little when I read it. Why? I've personally found it difficult to reposition and/or transform arms, hands, crossed legs, feet, etc. so they look realistic when I get done. When I do it, the result usually looks like a Dr. Frankenstein hack.

As an alternative to slicing, dicing and/or using the Transform (mangle?) function to manipulate limbs and the like, another Katrin gem is to "get replacement body parts" from other sources.

Pages from (remember these?) old Sears or Penny's catalogs are a goldmine of natural looking (and well lighted) images of hands, arms, feet, shoes, arms-around-shoulders, replacement clothes (if subject is standing), etc. Scan 'em, scale, touch 'em up, color correct and blend. Presto: New shoes (or arms or whatever).

Though not quite as gender nor age diverse as a Sears catalog, I've borrowed a few hands and bare feet from Victoria's Secret catalogs too... while shopping for my wife's birthday, of course! With the plethora of junkmail catalogs in circulation these days, there should be no shortage of ammunition.

I'm looking forward to seeing your final result, Sandra. Good luck.

DannyR

[Doug Nelson]

Here's a really (really!) bad composite job, but a quick and dirty composition composite (or comp-comp ). Just an idea.

[OhThatGirl2001]

Well, I've worked on it for a bit and I have to say, I like what you've done. I chose the woman on the right and saved the selection as Alpha chanel 1 and then inverted the selection and copy and pasted the two girls in. After that, it's a matter of sizing and color. I wasn't very creative with the background. As you can see, it is very similar to yours.

You're doing all the right things

Lisa

[Ed_L]

Ooops! Wrong one!

Ed

[DJ Dubovsky]

Why not put the woman behind the two girls? Wouldn't that eliminate your trouble area?
DJ

[OhThatGirl2001]

OK - so I tried leaning the mom a little closer. I think with a little juggling around - you can somehow cover the arm that's in the way.

Lisa
DJ - that's an interesting idea - I guess you would have to resize the girls first.

[Ed_L]

That looks real good! I don't know if that's the final version, but if it is I have one criticism. Getting rid of the table and bottle, (IMHO), would make it much better. Other than that, it looks great!

Ed

[Sanda]

thanks everybody you've all been a great help. It's so great that so may people are willing to give ideas and help when you need it.
That blue thing behind the girls is a person, it would be better if I removed it.
I favor the idea of the mother being included in the hug although putting mum behind the girls is interesting too. The reason I'm leaning towards the hug is my teenage son was looking at it with me and commented that it looked strange that the sister was hugging her sister and not her mum. He thought that hugging mum would be preferable to hugging a sister. So I'm working on two versions and I'll post them as soon as I have something closed to being finished and you may want to comment after all you guys may notice something I don't see.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Since altering the original hug might be alot of work with possible oddities emerging in thier posture you could also consider Mom joining the hug by extending an arm around the sister in back and the other arm coming across in front to clasp the girls. Just another idea to confuse you with Sanda.
DJ

[Sanda]

have a look at this, I still have a bit of tweeking to do but this might be ok

[OhThatGirl2001]

Wow! That looks fantastic!

Lisa

[Doug Nelson]

Yes it does

Fix the red-eye, fuzz the intersections a bit, and you've pretty much got it.

[Mike Needham]

I do so hate to be the fly in the ointment ( I was convinced myself by the photo ), however the only thing that caught my eye and distracted my attention from the realism, is that the arm is in an anatomicaly impossible posistion. I think a little shortening on the girls right arm ( our left ) might be more convincing.

however other than that its spot on!

[Sanda]

You're right Mike, I hadn't noticed that before but her arm couldn't have been that long, she'd be a freak. I can fix that.

[VidKid]

Can I add one more comment, because these type of manipulations are common. In my opinion, the two girls heads are a tad larger than the mother's. They stand out too much. The mother's head is in the foreground and should be larger.
You can verify by mearsuring from the chin to the hairline. Also, maybe add a drop shadow and use the other arm in the original
as the 'digital arm', darkening the mother's left side somewhat to match the darkness of the other side and to hide the arm.
You could try a Lighting Effect with a face mask to help balance the lighting out. Maybe color balance and lighten the mother's
face to match the two girls. The compostion works well even if the arm is a bit 'stretched'. The picture should make some
family member happy.

L8R,
VidKid

[jeaniesa]

Great work Sanda! If you're still working on it, the thing that hit me as not quite right is that the lighting on the girl's faces seems more "blue" than the lighting on the mother's face. I didn't notice the arm as much, but Mike's observation explains why my gaze was drawn to that area. That being said, I think you've done an awesome job of extracting out the pieces you needed and putting them back together!
Jeanie

[Mig]

A couple things you have to consider when faking a picture are colour/contrast and grain/texture. You need to match both to make it look good.
To match the colour and contrast I find the easiest way is to use channels and curves. Take your two pictures and put them side by side, then, on the layer of one of the pictures, go into each channel, open curves, and tug on the curves here and there until the red channel of the layer you're working on more or less matches the red channel of the destination pic, if you will. This will take some experimentation, but it's not a science. Whatever looks close is good. Continue to do that with each channel. When you're done, go to the composite channel and see how it looks. In all likelihood there will be a slight colour caste. This can be fixed with hue/saturation or colour balance. Selective colour is also a powerful tool here, to work on the individual colours in the whites, neutrals and blacks.
The better the quality of pictures you're trying to match up, the easier it will be to get something really good-looking. Some pictures are so small, or the lighting is too disparate that no matter what you do it will never look very convincing.
To match the grain, it's a pretty good idea to remove much of the grain in the pic and then add your own grain.
This faking business is a lot harder than it looks tho, and it takes years of practice. The attached picture isn't that good and it's oversharpened. The picture of the older woman wasn't very good and had to improved, and at the same time had to be free-transformed, which complicates things, while the picture of the two younger women, ok to begin with, had to be dumbed down a touch.

[Mig]

Picture - me dummy.

[BigAl]

I still like Sanda's first pic coz Mom and the older girl are leaning towards each other making a nice triangle, which groups them. The younger girl is then brought back into the grouping by hugging the sister. The fact that she isn't hugging Mom doesn't bug me as it could be a special occasion for the older girl.

Like Mike, I feel there's something wrong with the arm in Sanda's new pic. I don't feel it's the arm that's too long, but rather the shoulder is impossibly wide.

Mig's grouping is more of what I'd go for (although I haven't seen all of it, coz my link to RetouchPro keeps breaking - I hope this gets thru ).

[millicurie]

This is what I came up with. Tried to adjust the face sizes to match a little better and the color of each picture also. Cropped out most cause for some reason the mother's suit went white when I started messing with it.

[Sanda]

I forgot to show you what I ended up with for this photo. The client loved it, what do you think?

[DannyRaphael]

Well done! I can see why the client was very happy...and that's what counts more than anything.

BTW: No CD from WACOM yet!
But that gives us something to look forward to!

[BigAl]

Wonderful. Especially the way you've gotten the girls' hands to link with Mom.

[jeaniesa]

GREAT JOB Sandra!! Thanks for sharing it with us!
Jeanie