Background question...

[nokind100]

I have a portrait of a family in front of a horrible gray wrinkled muslin. Is there any way the background can be fixed or even better, have the color changed?

The portrait is going to be a large print. Any ideas?

Thank you!

[MaryLynn]

This is attempt is from a novice. I used PS Elements 2:

1. Duplicated the image and selected the background with the magic wand. Applied Gaussian Blur to smooth out the wrinkles.
2. Duplicated the layer and, with the background still selected, went to Color Variations and selected a thumbnail that looked better.
3. Applied a final Smart Blur to soften the edges between people and background.

I'm sure others would be able to give more definition to the background behind the three men in the center.

MaryLynn

[Gary Richardson]

Hi NoKind, had a play with your image as follows.

Copy Image to new layer. Extract figures from that layer.
Create new layer between extracted figures and background layer.
Set foreground and background colours to something suitable.
Use Render/Clouds filter to fill layer.
Create new layer above Cloud layer.
Set foreground background colours to Black/White. Create radial gradient from centre of image. Set layer blend mode to soft light and adjust opacity till background is as you'd like.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

PS. I always extract from a copied layer so that if I foul up I can delete it and start again.

[Flora]

Hi everybody,

MaryLynn,

a bit 'soft' around the edges, but very nice!!!!

Gary,

Great job!!

nokind100,

I did exactly what Gary did, the only difference being that I only used a radial gradient and change the background colour.

[Gary Richardson]

Flora, love the choice of background colour, it really makes the picture zing.

[Duv]

I'm not very good at this but you get the idea.

Cheers
Dave

[Flora]

Thanks Gary!!!!

Dave,

the curtain!! Great idea!!!!

[nokind100]

Marylynn, thank you for your input...looks good, just a little soft around there body/heads.

@.

[nokind100]

Hi Gary Richardson,

You are a master at work
It looks great, I'm going to try your steps on the raw image and hopefully it will come out as good as yours.

ThankYou!

@

[nokind100]

Hi Flora,

I was hoping you would reply to my post. Thank you for your input and the image does look better with the new color...much better. Thank you!!!

@.

[nokind100]

Dave, Thanks for the interesting idea of changing the background to a curtain. Just wondering how you did that?

Thanks,
@.

[Duv]

You'll find how to make curtains in the tutorial section, search for Curtains or Leah's curtains.

Dave

[Gary Richardson]

Hi nokind, sorry coming back to this so late, did'nt find your reply till now. Thanks for your kind comments, wish you all the best with your restore. Dave, love the curtains.

[Romany]

Hi nokind
Just had a go at the background change, but unfortunately forgot what I did , would be nice if Photoshop could save all the history to a log file.
Cheers
Chris