How do I smooth out my background?

[hongkongblue]

Hey guys,

Having an issue with getting a nice smooth background on my portraits. For my workflow, I mask in a gaussian blur filter at 89 radius, but I obviously can't get to close to the edges of my subject or I will get that bleeding blur from them. How do I do this properly?

Thanks!

http://i.imgur.com/TL1Rpth.png

[skoobey]

Re: How do I smooth out my background?

Dust and scratches and Median work much better if you're going down that route. I would either heal/dnb, or split the image into frequencies using a very small radius(effectively leaving the very fine noise/texture on top, then paint with small opacity in between the top and bottom layers. You can also use the split, and then apply median on the low layer.

To tackle larger portions you can use methods described above, but for for the detailed work you really need to rely on the manual cloning/dnb(edges around the subject) as median tends to chamfer the corners.

[klev]

Re: How do I smooth out my background?

Gaussian blur always looks like gaussian blur to me. If you really have to do that you might get away with it using some amount of noise to hide the work. The halo is because some of him was used as part of that blur. If it's a really wrinkled background, you can get around this by masking him out, making a more "complete" background on some layer, then using that for the blurred layer. The layer containing him should be on top in that case. Some noise should be added to the blurred layer to conceal what you did. Use appropriate scaling on the noise if necessary.

Seamless paper always wrinkles somewhat, so if you're going to use it, plan on some cleanup. Weighting it helps a little. Getting the subject far enough away with a wider aperture can help assuming you don't blur them with it. If the issues are minor, a little burn and dodge as well as some cautious use of the healing brush for small ones can work. Just be careful, and try to get down a system that works for you.

[Repairman]

Re: How do I smooth out my background?

I'd replace the background with a solid colour adding 2 or 3 very soft, lighter colour, vignettes around the head. Add grain to match the torso. If you use the same colour as the original it will be easy to blend in the hair.

[Leon William]

Re: How do I smooth out my background?

The most important part is the extraction of the areas where any modifications to be applied.

There are no short cuts to a perfect background modification, you have to crop/mask the object and make it independent of the background. You can try blurring, noise reduction options to smoothen the background.

[Britsdad]

Re: How do I smooth out my background?

hongkongblue
The only way I think you'll manage to get what you want is to make a selection of the subject (it will need to be a very good selection) jump it onto its own layer (Ctrl J) then loosely select around the subject on your background layer and 'content aware fill' to leave just the background colour and then gaussian blur.
That way you will not pickup colour from your subject....see the attachment for layers.

John

[shumicpi]

Re: How do I smooth out my background?

I have just used patch tool for this, I dont know its ok for you or not!