Putting new background in image

[Justin Goode]

Over memorial day my dad gave me this old picture of his mom and dad and his two brothers and wanted it turned into a picture of just his mom and dad. I'm thinking it'd be pointless to leave the pair standing in a random corner and that a plain background would work just as well. I've been trying to do that but they feel kind of "cut and paste" to me. I tried blurring the edges more, but that makes it feel worse. Any suggestions on how to make the newly added background feel real and natural??

before and after

ps, how do I put thumbnails in my posts?

[bart_hickman]

I took your "after" image and did two real basic things--moved the couple closer together and put in a new background. If you have a background from the same day with the same lighting, it'll automatically look natural. If you have a foreign background (such as the one I used), you'll need to apply curves/photo filters/color balance and so on to get the tones of the people and new background to match.

I did a real quick-n-sloppy job just to illustrate.

Bart

[Littlecoo]

Here is something that worked for me a couple of times.
Try: Extract the couple and set as layer (transparent), select transparent pixels, switch to 'inverse selection' in the menu, then create layer mask-show, 'select all' on layer mask(you should have a white mask of your figures on black back), add gaussian blur (I used about 5.0 blur on your jpeg example). Hide mask (btw alt-click or opt-click for mac). Your image will look faded out around the edges, that's ok. Put in the background image of your choice in a new layer beneath and tweak size till it looks right( I chose to plonk them in Europe somewhere- no special reason). Select your layer mask again (no alt/opt) select levels under Image=>Adjustments and experiment with the adjustment sliders until you are happy with the edge result. I did this much to your image so it still needs fine tweaking etc... hope this helps you.
Cheers

[Justin Goode]

Well I was talking to my dad and he wanted to see if could put his mom and dad on a portrait type of backdrop, so here's what I came up with. Lemme know what you think.

Image

[Swampy]

You might need to cast a shadow on your background.

[Daviskw]

Hi Justin

I think you did a good job of removing them from the original picture and I see you followed Bart's advice about moving them closer together.

To me however I think the informality of the picture would make it better suited for a closer presentation

Butch

[philbach]

I didn't know about the backdrop