Had few brief moments of sun this afternoon so I took the kids outside to play. Here is a snap shot of my son that I took..... I removed it from the background because there was a tree growing out of his head. Not sure I'm entirely happy with the way the selection turned out - seems a little hard/obvious to me. The background is a "Digital Backgrounds by Sam Briggs". Don't remember now what the link was - but you could probably google it. Lots of studio type backgrounds in .psd format.

12-12-07-Ari.gif (106.82 KiB) Viewed 1534 times

As always I welcome constructive criticism!

looks good, Jane. Maybe run a noise program on it and sharpen a little. You could also clone out the tree then blur the background, I think that would look good

Jane, he is growing so fast. Such a handsome little boy. Nice shot. I would give Susan's suggestion a try and use your existing background.

Jane, what about taking another photo of the same area for the background and placing him on it. That may be easier since you already have the cutout of him. Very handsome boy........look out girls!!!

Jane,
He really is precious. He would look great in a sketch & color his blue eyes back in.
Christell

Here's something you can try when you use a digital background like that. I use it on my portraits and it seems to make them look better, like they belong together.

After you have moved your subject onto the background and have made all your adjustments, make a copy of the background and move that layer on top of your subject layer. Then go to Filter -> Blur -> Average on that layer. This takes all the colors and combines them, and may look kinda weird, but bear with me here.

After the averaging is done, then drop the opacity on that layer way, way down, to around 5% or so. Just enough to get the effect of the layer and thats about all you want. I have found that this balances out the lighting of the entire portrait making it look like your subject was actually standing in front of that background. This gives you the lighting that would have been reflected off the background as if it had really been there and makes everything appear a bit more natural. Especially if your moving a picture that was shot in totally different lighting. To me anyway.

If you check the portraits in my gallery I used this trick on all of them.

Nice job, Jane,
I really like what you did.

Here's another trick that sometimes works well if you think you have a hard-edge selection. Get on the "head layer" and reload the selection. Then modify the selection - contract - not much 1 or 2 px (depends on resolution of your image). Then - invert - and then Ctrl-J. Because you inverted the selection, you now have a thin outline of the selection on that new layer.

Now apply a gaussian blur to that "outline layer". Not much, 1 or 2 px. That softens the edge. Because it's on a single layer you can screw around and blur more or less if needed.

Rusty

Thanks for tips! I'm going to give those a try during nap time today if the little darlings will actually nap!

Hi Jane,

if the little darlings will actually nap!

I've heard doting grandmas say "little darlings", I've heard over-perfumy smoochy aunts say "little darlings" and I've heard moms say "little darlings".

Guess which kind I "heard" just now

They are both beautiful little people, without a doubt.

Have fun,
Steve

Well one is napping - but the one that is the subject here is NOT!

I combined Rusty's and Gene's suggestions and did some experimenting of my own.... I think it looks better - what do you think?

12-12-07 Ari.jpg

(108.83 KiB) Downloaded 64 times