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1.
If you read the tutorial on Making Selections: Using the Lasso and Magnetic
Lasso, then who can forget the photo of this businessman?
You'll all recall, I'm sure, that I had used the Magnetic Lasso  and the Lasso  to select him and separate him from his background. During this tutorial I'll show you how to seamlessly place him on a new background.
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2.
When we last saw our friend's head you remember he was plagued by that problem of
residual color from his original background. If I used the lasso to un-select
these areas, I'm afraid we'd lose too many hairs and his hair would look too much
like a helmet. We need those stray hairs to make his blend into the new background
look more believable. But how do I get rid of the yellowish color you see in some
of the pixels?
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3.
The Eraser Tool  is the answer. I'm going to partially erase the pixels that look odd, and make them more transparent, so whatever background I put under the layer shows through convincingly.
First I need to make a selection. So I don't accidentally erase some of the pure brown pixels that I want to keep opaque, I take the eyedropper tool  and sample the yellow-est pixel I can find. Then I choose Select: Color Range... and crank up the Fuzziness slider to 200. Since I'm just going to be erasing near the edge, I don't need to worry about any pixels in his face that are selected. |
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4.
Double click the eraser tool
to take a look at the tool's Options Palette. You can choose what you want the eraser to behave like from the pop-up menu. I usually prefer the Paintbrush. Opacity controls the degree of erasing that will be done. Since I only wanted to partially erase the pixels and make them a little transparent I started at 10%. I later changed this to 20%, and in some stubborn areas, 30%. |
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5.
The two images to the left are close-ups of the left side of the guy's neck so
you can see how the eraser tool was working.
Remember, I had made a selection of the yellowish areas. I chose an appropriately sized brush and began sweeping the eraser over the edge of the guy.
You can see based on comparing the top and bottom images, that the yellow hue was leaving the fringe pixels as the eraser passed over it, and they were becoming transparent letting the background show through.
If I thought and area needed more erasing I simply "painted" over it a couple or more times. A setting of 100% in the eraser tool's Opacity field, would have completely erased the selected pixels. I was playing it safe- removing one-tenth of their opacity with each pass. |
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6.
Once I was done erasing around the man's entire outer edge, removing all of
the yellowness, it was time for the second and final trick to get this guy to
blend in with the background more convincingly.
I needed to soften his outer edge by blurring it. |
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6. (continued)
In the image above and directly to the left, I Command clicked on the layer
containing the man in the Layers Palette. (Windows users- Control-click) This loads a selection of the layer's contents.
What I'm going to do now is blend our businessman's outer edge with the background. That's what happens in real pictures (That's what my last few steps have been trying to get rid of- left-over blending of this guy with his original yellow background. |
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7.
I'm going to blur the edge of this man, so I choose Select: Modify: Border.... I chose a value of 4 pixels for my border (your choice would depend on the resolution of your image.) Next I chose Select: Feather... and typed 2 in the Feather Radius field. This will blend and soften my effect so there are no sudden changes which stand out unnaturally.
Here you can see my marquee edge turned into a 4 pixel wide selection around the border of the man. |
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8.
It's time to apply the blur. Choose Filter: Blur: Gaussian Blur.... The preview box to the left pops up. Move the Radius slider bar to the right and your selected area will blur more. Move it towards the left, and less blurring will occur. If the Preview box is checked, you'll see immediate results in your image. I picked a radius of 2 pixels. |
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8. (continued)
Here you can see the
result of the Gaussian Blur on our man's edge. Looks pretty good.
I frequently see outlining jobs in publications. If I can tell what went on, then it's probably not a great job. One of the mistakes I see frequently is an "aliased" or too-hard, too-crisp edge. Look in some of the cheaper catalogs and magazines (you know the one I mean) and see if you can spot this mistake. |
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9.
Here's our guy all finished. He's nicely blurred and blended into his
background.
The difference is very subtle, but if you're going to be good at retouching reality, you've got to train your eye to look for subtle reasons that images don't look quite "right"; figure out what the cause is; and correct it. |
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10.
Though that "border blurring" trick that I did above if not as effective as flattening the image and then doing the gaussian blur, one of the advantages to leaving your subject on an upper layer is that you can slap any old background in there and it looks pretty natural. Anyone that wasn't looking for it wouldn't notice any problems. |
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11.
Here's a variation on the background above. For kicks, I goofed around with
the colors in the seascape. Everything still looks pretty convincing around the
edge of this archetypal business guy.
Aren't you sick of seeing him by now? I know I am.
Happy Image Editing! |
