Scenic background replacement

[Little_Lisa Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Little_Lisa]

HI.......I have just found this forum today and think its really terrific!!!!!! It's solved 99.9% of my problems in the hour so far BUT I just have this background problem I cant seem to find anywhere (or just not looking hard enough) hehehe here goes...
Is there a tutorial on how to repair background images, IE::.... ive cut out a person out of a photograph and need to replace it with the rest of a tree of which the person was standing in front of and a bit of water (i hope you can still follow me) Im using photoshop and a newbie to this. I can only seem to find how to replace plain colours but not scenic backgrounds.

Thanks in advance!!!!!

[jrolinc Member Find all posts View Profile Close jrolinc]

HI

Welcome to RetouchPro...yes, you'll find LOT's of help here.

If you upload the picture, I'm sure you'll find more help than you can ever use.

Usually takes some cloning work, maybe working with the Patch tool, but we would have to see the picture to help further.

[Little_Lisa Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Little_Lisa]

Thanks for the fast response!!!!!!
I cant find that pic at the moment but here is something like what I mean.....well close enough
If I took the person out of this picture , how do I fix the backgound up.

Thanks heaps!!!!!!!

[tyeise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tyeise]

I don't think it would help on this particular image, as the background is a city, not natural.

But Alien Skin has a filter out called Image Doctor, and it has a Smart Fill that fills in a selection with what was around it.

You can find more info at: http://www.alienskin.com/idoc/idoc_filters.html

Tyeise

[Flora Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Flora]

Hi Little_Lisa!

here is what I came up with trying to fix a complex background after removing part of the picture...Usually, I replace the background (which is much easier), so, what I tried here was just plain 'Layer via Copy:

1) select part of the 'good' picture'

2) feather the selection (for better belending)

3) copy it, (Ctrl+J), on its own Layer

4) move it, (V), over the part you want to hide.

I repeated this procedure until the person was completely covered using the Curves, Hue & Saturation, Clone and Patch Tools to blend the selections with the surrounding background.

....and here is the result:

[Little_Lisa Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Little_Lisa]

WOW thanks flora and tyeise , that helps heaps!!!!!!!!
Im new to the forum and to retouching photo's so im not too clear on what your talking about flora but its a start for me I just have to sit down with photoshop and inspect it more closely> I have read a few tutorials and learning more each day!
FLORA>>>>>> is there a step by step tutorial on what u did?Im still not sure
U did a wonderfull job on the pic !!!!

Thanks !!!

[Flora Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Flora]

Hi Little_Lisa!

Thank you for your kind words!!!

The 'Layer via Copy' technique I used on your picture is described in the tutorial 'Removing Unwanted Elements' in this Sample Chapter of Katrin Eismann's Book Photoshop Restoration and Retouching....

In your picture I first replaced the person's head, (Gosh...I really sound like the most cold-blooded headsman!!!!!)... with part of the surrounding sky and, piece by piece......... I replaced the rest...

[Andrew B. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew B.]

Hi Flora. Very impressive object removal, especially the perspective.

[Little_Lisa Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Little_Lisa]

WOW!!! Thanks flora!!! U should write your own book ....LoL
Thanks again for all your help
Cheers