Piggyback Ride

[Miche']

[IMG][/IMG]

I love that the baby is hanging on to the ears for support in this pic..he is so cute. But the picture itself I think it too dark and there is some things I find distracting in the background. I tried cloning them out(it looked terrible) darkening the background but I could not find a route that kept them well light. Need suggestions on this one please.

[Destiny]

Have you tried blurring out the background, and playing around with your enhance options, this can lead to a brighter less distracting result.

[jiminyClickit]

Miche',

Background is out of focus, and you want it lighter? Or you want subjects better lighted, without background? Is this as taken out of camera, or did you crop?

[Miche']

Hi Jiminy!

This picture was taken that way, it is not a crop and no I would like to have the background darker. In PS I had difficulty in finding a balance between lighting the subjects properly and darkening the background. What other options there may be I am unaware of but I am open to. Thank you for stopping by and asking!
Hopefully I have explained myself better this time around.

[Miche']

Destiny,

Did you use Photoshop to blur the background? Thank you for editing my shot. I still can't figure out how to separate background from subject when I am editing a shot. Thanks again!

[jiminyClickit]

Miche',

Still not certain how to bridge the gap between PhotoShop and PhotoDeluxe language. Is it the concept, the actual functioning of PS, the directions they give, the steps I describe? Somehow this can be made clearer; if you describe at what point it gets to be too much to go on, or if the idea of layering is too new, let me know. You should be having this fun, too:



Bigger on Flickr, background is still there, just too dark to distract.

[Miche']

Hi Jiminy!!

Its a lot better than mine that's for sure.Great job on the background but I still think that the subjects particularly the baby, still do not have enough lighting don't you? Also no,your instructions are not getting lost in translation,it just takes me a minute to search through my software to find the similar commands. Plus, never having used those commands before I am a little in the dark as far as what they do. But each time you leave instruction I print them out and the pieces of the puzzle start coming together. I just recently found my layering tools from your instructions. Did not know they were there before! Anyway thank you I am really learning a lot from you.

[Nicole]

Hi Miche'

Hope I'm not jumping in out of turn, but I did some lightening work on Jim's version of your shot to hopefully make the subjects pop out a bit more. Cute pic by the way



What I did was select the "black" background using the magic selection wand (the areas were above their heads, and under his arms). The area under the arm on the right I painted in using the selection brush. I then inverted the selection (Select -> Invert) and then feathered the selection to 5 pixels to avoid a harsh line (Select -> Feather). Finally, I used Enhance -> Adjust lighting -> Shadows and Highlights, then lightened the shadows by about 25-30%. Seemed to lighten the subjects up a bit hopefully

[Miche']

Nicole,

That is exactly what I have been trying to do but did not know how to. Your instructions sound like Adobe Photo Shop. But I don't want to assume so. Anyway I am going to go back and try to duplicate it per your instruction and see what I can come up with. Though to be honest, at the moment it feels a little over my head. But I will try! Thank you very much for taking the time to do the edit. I am super pleased with the outcome!

[Nicole]

Miche' it's from Photoshop Elements, so yup, it's at least one version of photoshop (shame on me for forgetting to mention what program I was using ) Don't worry if it all feels over your head at the moment, you're obviously capable of playing around with all of the tools in Photoshop to get the result you're after.