Creating missed shot at wedding

[manwez]

Here is my before shot:



Now, this was from the first wedding I've ever shot, which was last weekend. Going through all the pics, I realise I don't have one of the bride, her mother and her sister (maid of honor) and the mother mentioned that, and asked if with today's technology there was a way to MAKE the photo. So I took this one and cropped out FOB and removed the groom (explanation below) to get this:



Its a much tighter crop than I'd prefer in a photo, but I felt it necessary to get a cleaner look.

I started by just plain cropping the FOB out. Next I selected the bride and her sister and copy/pasted to make them another layer. I then used the clone tool to get rid of the groom. I selected the MOB and made her another layer, then slipped that layer in behind the bride.

Cleanup was done with clone and eraser tool to get the background to "gel".

My hope is that to the untrained eye, they'll barely notice anything strange about it. I emailed the pic to MOB and she was ecstatic with it. I also sent her a copy of it with the FOB just cropped out and groom still in it. She's happy with that one too, as they are divorced

[mbrygel]

wow, well done!
i don't think anyone would ever be able to tell!

[zona5101]

Very nice! Mom's got a little bit of haloing in the edges but nice work. You can select and feather that egde a bit if you want...but it sounds like your mom is happy with it so no worries!

[kurtwall]

Better than I could have done, to be sure. There's a vertical shadow on the right side of the mother's neck that needs work.

[Sime]

Our photographer missed my wife's dad.... not in the album.... we moved half way around the world pretty much right after the wedding, so he's not seen the album... but one day! -- eeek --

[tchudson]

Excellent work.

[TheSteve9x]

Wow! Very nice work on this. I did a double take after I realized the 2nd picture even came from the 1st picture. Beautiful shot.

[Glayva]

What a brilliant job you have done. As an ex wedding photographer I too can feel for you!! How ever long you are "in the business" you will always get the person who wants to know why you did not take a shot of so and so with him or her. You will also get the dad who wants to spend most of the time in the bar with HIS friends and then he will want you to photograph him with them - all taking up precious time. Another thing, the first dance photo never comes after the cutting of the cake. I found that the couple will wait long after the dj has started - so a good tip is to ask the couple to "pretend" they are doing the first dance. You can usually get the dj to turn up the light a bit and also ask the couple to stand still while you get a shot. Flash kills the natural ambient atmosphere so try to avoid. Hope all this helps in the future.

If you want to see, in my opinion, the greatest wedding photographer around - then take a look at the site of Australian master - YERVANT. Just google his name.

Lovely group shot!!

[kknight]

Great job - I think it is awesome work.

Now, this was from the first wedding I've ever shot, which was last weekend. Going through all the pics, I realise I don't have one of the bride, her mother and her sister (maid of honor) and the mother mentioned that, and asked if with today's technology there was a way to MAKE the photo. So I took this one and cropped out FOB and removed the groom (explanation below) to get this:



Its a much tighter crop than I'd prefer in a photo, but I felt it necessary to get a cleaner look.

I started by just plain cropping the FOB out. Next I selected the bride and her sister and copy/pasted to make them another layer. I then used the clone tool to get rid of the groom. I selected the MOB and made her another layer, then slipped that layer in behind the bride.

Cleanup was done with clone and eraser tool to get the background to "gel".

My hope is that to the untrained eye, they'll barely notice anything strange about it. I emailed the pic to MOB and she was ecstatic with it. I also sent her a copy of it with the FOB just cropped out and groom still in it. She's happy with that one too, as they are divorced

[FormElement]

A similar bravo here too. Any casual looker would not notice, at least at web size.

Note three things that are givaways for a shopped subject/background. You can still make these very small corrections if you care. Sounds like the customer is happy though.

1) When a subject is clipped, they lose the fine stray hairs and such that are always present. Paint a few in if possible, or work harder to include them in the clipping. On a busy background though, clipping them can be a real excercise in futility.
2) Due to focus/diffraction, edges blend slightly with any background. If the background changes, the edges will retain the old hue blend and can look odd. Make sure the clipped edges are blended ever so slightly with the new background to give the suggestion of natural light wrap.
3) Last, the subjects are now apparently closer to the same plane, but have slightly different levels of focus. You may want to soften the sharper subjects just a tiny tad to make them the same sharpness as the soft subjects.

Those are just suggestions BTW, and pretty advanced technique. On a casual looksee I did not notice. So you have done a very acceptable job. I actually had to look at the full size version on flickr to notice the slight oddities.