What’s Your Preference?

Sooner_Girl27 · #1 (**permalink**) 10-07-2010, 01:22 AM

We took our daughters to the "pumpkin patch" today which was actually a bunch of pumpkins on a piece of grass in a church parking lot. My daughter actually hates the camera so I got this as the best shot of her with the pumpkins, only problem, the background was a bit of an eye sore...soooo...with a little bit of Photoshop magic, I fixed it and now worthy to print and put in a frame along with my other daughters pic.

So here is the original, a little underexposed (as my camera likes to blow out dead even on my meter), shot in manual on an overcast afternoon.
28mm, f/2.8, ISO 200, 1/320

My editing to the image-
Opened in PS CS3

Opened the levels box and moved the middle slider to the left a bit and the left slider to the right just a touch.

Opened up the curves and gave it a slight "S" curve. Which just means I gave the line a curve that resembles an S.

I didnt care for the background so I found a stock photo of corn stalks.

Opened the corn stalk picture in PS, went to Filter/Blur/Lens Blur/and used the Octagon shape to make it look a bit like bokeh. Just enough to match the amount on my pumpkins from my actual picture.

To merge the two pictures together I first duplicated my original picture.
I placed the blurred cornstalk picture in between those two layers so it would show in the layers pallet, background, underneath that would be the corn stalk pic, then under than would be my original picture.

On the top layer, which is the pumpkin pic with my daughter, I put a mask on it (its the square with a circle in the middle of it icon below your layers in PS). Then with a soft black brush I "painted" on the layer below it, which is the corn stalk pic. I went over the edges very carefully with a smaller brush than I used for the rest of the more open spaces to ensure a smooth and complete coverage.

The awesome thing about using a mask, instead of your eraser brush, which you could also use, is that if you mess up, you just have to change your brush color from black to white to repaint it back on!

I then adjusted the levels on the corn stalk pic just a bit to match my pic of my daughter, merged the two layers and I got this!