How to edit this kind of baby photos?

[yulchick]

Hi there, I really like the type of baby photography where everything is black, besides the baby, or the arms cradling the lil one.

I have Photoshop CS5, and Lightroom3, to do my post work on the shot. I really need some tips on how to go about post processing the shot, any tips on how to do so using these two programs would be awesome!

I took a quick shot of my lil one, to try this kind of thing. Here is the picture I want to play around with.



I think you'r suppose to burn out the backround, and so I tried, but now there is a harsh outline around the baby, and it looks like it was cutout, and just not appealing...how do I make it blend with the black?

So this is the same picture with a burned out backround, now I need help!




No clue how to fix it any further!

Looking forward to some tips

[statichash]

Hi Julia,

There are many different types of methods for processing the photo to achieve what you want. Working with a copy that you provided (I hope that you don't mind - please let me know and I can delete if you desire), here are the steps I took to achieve it using Photoshop.

Step1: Starting from the image alone in your layers. Duplicate the layer (Ctrl+j on PC, Cmd+j on Mac). Then from the layers drop down, select Multiply, this will darken your entire image, including the baby. Next create a mask on this new layer by selecting the mask button. Select your brush tool and mask out the baby so that the baby on the lower layer is exposed. Essentially, you've "burned" the whole image, and then you're un-burning the baby. On the edges, you can lower the opacity of the brush to minimize a harsh edge, this will help with the "blending with the black" that you desire.



Step2: Once you're happy with the way it looks masked, you can merge the layers together to create a single layer. Then open the layers menu (Ctrl+l on PC and Cmd+l on Mac) and select the shadow dropper and select the darkest spot in the photo, I used the bottom left corner. Next select the middle levels dropper and select the mid level set of pixels, usually this is the gray zone in an image, I selected the area on the ankle. Next you can select the highlights and find the brightest spot, I omitted this step because it was blowing out the highlights too much, so I only used the shadow and mid levels.



Final image: It's not a spectacular difference; but working with the original file will provide you with much better results. I hope this gives you an idea of one of the potential ways to process it. There are many other ways to do this, everyone has a different workflow for doing things and the method I did was the quick and dirty way to demonstrate to you one of the ways it could be done, hopefully others will chime in with even better alternatives.
Cheers!

*Mouse over the image to see your processed version*

[yulchick]

I dont have a problem with you using my image, thanks for taking the time to explain how to do this kind of thing. I will try it out a bit later! thanks for the help