Creative challenge 007: Knocking out a background

[Cameraken]

Thanks Gary and Nancy.

I learnt it in another thread here at Retouch Pro

1. Create 3 new layers in your image.

2. On the bottom layer create a radial blend going from about 40% black in the centre to %70 black at the edges.

3. For the middle layer, select brown and green as your foreground/background colours. Choose Render-->Clouds.

4. For the top layer, select blue and green as your foreground/background colours. Choose Render-->Clouds.

Set the two top layers to Normal mode and about 10-20% transparency. Adjust them until you get an effect you like. Adjust the color using Hue/Saturation on either or both of the two top layers. If the overall effect is too dark, light, contrasty or flat, adjust the levels on the bottom layer.

That is the bit I copied from the other thread, Then I added the noise. (Quite a high setting)

Ken

[Nanls]

Love it! Thanks!
~Nancy~
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Photo Retouching, Photo Restoration
http://www.fixthepixs.com
http://www.datepixs.com

[Kraellin]

i'm not going to do this myself at this point, but i seem to recall another extraction method i ran across here on RP. rather than try to remove the green from the hair, you turn ALL of the hair green and then extract. after the extraction you then do a channel mix or color balance to turn it all back correct. something like that.

and Fox, what is the russel brown technique and post a link to it if you've got it, please!

Craig

[Gary Richardson]

Ken, thanks for the breakdown, have tried the cloud method myself, but adding the noise seems to open up a whole new range of possibilities.

Craig, I think that the technique fox used can be found here.
See Advanced Masking.

[Fox54Black]

Originally Posted by Gary Richardson

Craig, I think that the technique fox used can be found here.
See Advanced Masking.

Yes, that's the tutorial I was talking about. It takes awhile to wrap your mind around it at first, but once you understand it, it's more efficient than most other techniques.

[Kraellin]

thanks gary, fox!

Craig

[dbuckle]

This another try this time using Studio Artist to do the knock out and painting effects.

[Con Looymans]

Hi Danny,

I copied the Red Channel and then used calculations to multiply it by itself and then usd black and white brushes to turn it into a purely black and white outline.

I used a brush set to Color to paint out the green spilling onto the subject.

finally I scalled another image and dropped it into the background.

Hope you like it.

Con

[ahutton]

I simply used PSP's lasso feature on "smart edges" with a feather of 3 and cut her out. Then I just pasted her into a "painting" I'm working on, and added a wide grey shadow so it looks like she is styanding in front of the painting.

Amy

[Chance_1]

Since the objective is to replace the background, with some other pleasing background image, the following procedure was used.


Layer 0: Original Image with green background. Duplicate the layer, so the original is not damaged.
Layer 1: Has Duplicated Image, here you can do adjustments for sat/hue/contrast and so forth.


Now open a new image, that you have selected to replace as the background, and then Open it. You want to be sure that the imported image has the same dpi as the target image which here is 72 dpi.

Then using the Move Tool, move the new image by dragging it into the prior target image. The software will put it on a new layer. This is Layer 2. If necessary move it to the top of all the layers in the target document.

Layer 2.
(a) Activate the new Layer 2, and then click the add Mask button which is located at the bottom of the layer menu. This adds a white colored layer mask on Layer 2. Activate the Layer Mask by clicking inside it.

(b) Click D to make the colors default as Black/white Foreground/Background colors for painting in the mask.

(c) Then pick a soft brush to paint inside the mask, paint in black will reveal the orignal picture, and if you paint with white, you you correct any errors as needed.

Finally crop as needed and save. Using Masks, there is no need to remove the background Image, you just paint in whatever is needed. If background must be removed for some reason, there are many methods to do so.