[Bibyrox]

I ask you again to help me. I have this photo and I want to make a wedding invitation (10x15) but the photo is looking bad... I tried to remove the background using the channels selection but.. no success!
Can you please try to do a beautiful cover for the invitation? And try to explain me how to do it?! Please... it's important for me.
Thank you thank you very much!!!

[Cameraken]

Hi Biby

The photograph you have posted is not very sharp. Also it is quite difficult to make a good mask to separate the background.

I made it into a pencil sketch. This made it very easy to delete the background and then I added a bit of colour back.

If you don’t like it, that’s fine. If you do you could post in the photo based art section to get some more ideas.

Ken

[CathyH]

HI
I took a quick stab at this. If you like it I can try to give you the steps I used to do it.

Hope this helps.

cathy

[Cassidy]

On a quick cursory look without colour correction etc, rather than using a mask from one of the channels, it appeared easier to use the magic wand to select the background, then clean up the quickmask. A inversion of the mask selection and then a feather of say 3 and copy to new layer

[Tony30144]

I did this in about 10 minutes; note that there is no color corrections. Basically:
1. Extract couple from background (filter/extract)
2. Quick mask to clean up strays.
3. Select head and shoulders.
4. Run vignette.

Hope that helps.
Tony

[Duv]

I agree that it isn't a sharp image. It might be best to accentuate the soft focus, romantic side of the image. Also, perhaps a square crop might help.

Cheers
Dave

[Bibyrox]

WOW!!! I knew I can count on you!!! Great job all!!!

Cathy of course i want to know your steps, please!

Thank you very much!

Another question for you... How can I do a "heart" selection with blurred sides?

[CathyH]

Biby
I selected the couple with the magnetic lasso, applied a layers mask then went to filter/blur/gaussian and set the setting to 25. This blurs the layers mask.

Applied a hue/saturation adjustment layer, checked the colorized box. and slide the lightness down. I may have adjusted the color too.

For the edge, I took the rectangular marquee tool drew a box, not as large as the image, then I went to select/inverse and filled that selection with a color I picked out of her dress. then I applied another layer mask and did the same think as the couple. filter/blur/gaussian set to 25.

on the layer mask, I used a paint bursh with the star shape and white as the color, I painted the stars on the layer mask. then the text font=beautiful

[Kraellin]

this may be a bit much; i dont know.

Craig

[kvryland]

This is my shot at it. I used Corel PhotoPaint

After duplicating the background layer, I masked off the couple, smoothed the mask, and saved the mask as an alpha channel.
I cut the couple out of the duplicated background and deleted the rest of the that layer.
I inserted a blank layer and filled it with the pinkish fill and then applied a Gaussian blur to that layer.
I pasted two copies of the couple on top of the pink layer.
I heavily blurred the lower of these two layers.
I feathered the top layer (couple) and then applied a radial transparency to that layer.
That's it. Hope this is helpful.

Ken Ryland

[kvryland]

I see that I made at least one goof with this picture. I failed to mask the area between the girl's hair and the boy's necktie. That green-tinged area is easy to remove, so it shouldn't present a problem.

Ken Ryland

[Shalford]

Had a play around with your photo.

Stupidly I didn't make notes of what I did, but it is easily recreated in need be.
Working horrible hours at the moment so I don,t know when that would be.

Hope all goes well!!

Regards

[Duv]

Hey Craig..nothin wrong with being out there a bit. Stretching is what makes it all work in the end.

Dave
Photoshop. I like it.

[Kraellin]

thanks duv. i think i like shalford's better, though

Craig

[Duv]

Craig, I wouldn't disagree with you.

Cheers

Dave