Photographers Background

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

Right, what do you call them things that photographers make you stand in from of when your getting your photo taken......the blueish, whiteish sheet thing they use as a background?

Secondly would anyone know where I could get a reasonably large image of a blank one, or alternatively how I could knock together a background that looks similar in Photoshop?

 

[Johnny|lucidcomposure]

Right, what do you call them things that photographers make you stand in from of when your getting your photo taken......the blueish, whiteish sheet thing they use as a background?

Secondly would anyone know where I could get a reasonably large image of a blank one, or alternatively how I could knock together a background that looks similar in Photoshop?

Do you refer to one of these ?

Sky like pop up screen

 

[BrenOS]

What are you wanting to achieve?

It's relatively easy to remove a background from a portrait photo in PS. Or are you wanting an autumn scene background for example?

Alternatively if you just want to take a photo with no background as such, any large colour sheet of card will do. PS can "pick" this colour and remove it.

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

Exactly like the post 2 above is demonstrating, the sort of pale blue background thingy.

What I'm doing is taking a person out of a photo and placing them on their own with the background thing behind them. (and adding a few fingers and a left arm, but meh )

I'm used to working in Corel Photopaint where I had a thing set up that would just dump a randomly generated background in, but I don't have that anymore. There must be a way of doing it in Photoshop, but I'm not used to it fully yet.

 

[Dup]

I made this tutorial a while ago detailing one method of what you're asking using Photoshop. I never made the final composed pic but I could do another for both our entertainment if you like?
Basically you can just copy and paste the last step onto your background and then use the a soft/hard eraser brush to neaten up any anomalies.

Usually people photograph against a generic plain background if they plan to PS the end product, which they can use photoshop to regognise it as a "green screen" like they using in movies etc.

In my example I will this image:
1. TVR Chimera - Taken by me, heavily resized for the example.

Example 1 - Quick Mask Selection

This technique makes use a of a little known mode in Photoshop called Quick Mask.
The icon is located on the lower half of the tool pallete below the foreground and background color options. You can also use the shortcut Q to access it.

Step 1
Firstly, you will need to make a rough selection of the object using the lasso tool. I prefer to use the polygon lasso, but the normal lasso will work just as well.

 

[Dup]

No need to be accurate, just get an idea of the outline of the object like so:

Step 2
Now activate Quick Mask mode (Shortcut - "Q"). You will now see that the area around your selection has been masked with a (usually red as standard) opaque colour. This is just another representation of your selection and should look as follows:

Now, to start the magic you need to select the brush tool.

Step 3
Now to start refining the selection. First off you should realise the background/foreground colours have changed to Black and white.
Black add's to the mask (adds red opaqueness) and white subtracts it.

The aim is to use the brush tool to paint round the object to get a smooth and accurate mask around it. You can switch between the black and white using the arrow on the top right to them like so:

You can adjust the brush however you like to get the desired effects by using the brush tool options under the main program toolbar like so:

Now just keep adding and subtracting the mask until you feel happy you have totally masked the parts of the image you do not want. You can check your selection anytime buy just hitting the Quick Mask button or pressing "Q".

 

[Dup]

You should have something that looks like these:
Mask:

Selection:

From there you can cut the image from the background by using ctrl+x and then ctrl+v to pase it into your new image. Easy!

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

thats a lovely tutorial Dup, but all I want really is a reasonably large picture of one of those photographers backgrounds, so I can put the man on top of it.

He's already cut out and has his new arm and fingers, and is just waiting for a lovely background to put him in front of.

I couldnt find the mask tool though, so I just went back to basics and got rid of his old background with the good old eraser tool.

Edit: Found a suitable background on stock.xchng.

Also, Dup, what would you do about the grass in the windscreen? How would you go about removing that, but maintaining the "sheen" across the window?

 

[Dup]

You'd cut that out like the rest and you'd see the new background through it.

Theres a few ways of doing it, but you could clone stamp the missing windscreen, add a gradient in the shape, repaint it from scratch etc. Not wholly difficult. Then all you do is change the opacity and/or the blending option on that layer and play with the hue/sat (ctrl+u).

Glad you found some backgrounds. Might be a good time to photograph some of your own for future use.

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

You'd cut that out like the rest and you'd see the new background through it.

Theres a few ways of doing it, but you could clone stamp the missing windscreen, add a gradient in the shape, repaint it from scratch etc. Not wholly difficult. Then all you do is change the opacity and/or the blending option on that layer and play with the hue/sat (ctrl+u).

Glad you found some backgrounds. Might be a good time to photograph some of your own for future use.

It would be a good idea for me to go get a few stock backgrounds. Thats the 3rd time I've been caught out now. Also may as well do it while I've got a Canon EOS 20D in my house, housemate bought one, and its a damn nice camera.

I never thought about just creating a gradient in a shape and using opacity for the windscreen, I'll give that a go in future.

Thanks!