Is it p[ossible to change a solid black background in a portrait?

[Scatterbrain]

I did my 1st nursery shoot a couple of weeks ago (62 children - absolutely exhausting, but lots of fun).

I used a solid black backdrop and a couple of the parents have asked if I can change it! Obviously the photographs have been taken now, so it's difficult fo me to see how to do this without it looking fake.

I can't show you the actual pic from the shoot, but for arguments sake, assume it's this one (although the actual pic wasn't Xmas themed).


Any thought. I thought I'd try lightening it up & maybe adding a little texture, but with hair etc I can't imagine doing anything more adventurous.

I'm open to suggestions...

Thanks

S

[navcom]

Yikes! That's a good question. I know from my experience it's not very easy. The trick is not changing the background itself...that's pretty easy. The trick is to change the "halo" that is created around any subject by it's surrounding background. If you lighten up the background, it will not look natural as the halo will be darker than it's surroundings. I'm sure there is a way but I don't know what the results will look like or how hard (translated meaning how time consuming) it will be.

Any one else know?

[dave_lines]

I would say that it is possible,, select the black and then invert to select the child. Then move to a new bg. Depending on the bg you choose, and how good the selection is,, it should cover reasonably well. Say if you used a bg with snow covered trees or something on that order it would cover most anything. DAve

[dcclark]

As others have mentioned, the black "halo" you'll see around the child will cause trouble. One way to help fix this is:

1. Select the black
2. Invert
3. "Feather" the selection with a smallish radius, say 5 or 10 pixels (this means that the edges of the selection will gradually fade into non-selection)

The result should be that the black "halo" is more or less translucent, and will blend in to your new and improved background. It won't be perfect, but with such a striking contrast between background and subject, it should be pretty close!

[JCatara]

Get the magic wand. tolerance at 32 anti alias and contiguous on. Click the black areas.
Hold down the shift key and click all the other black areas. When ya got em all selected,
press CTRL-SHIFT-I to invert the selection. Then CTRL-J to copy it to a new layer. There was some brown around his neck and cheek I lowered the tolerance and selected that. Remember hold down the shift key when adding to a selection. Use the eliptical or rectangle with the ALT key to subtract from the selection. Add a mask. Zoom in and using black get rid of the little artifacts that remain. That picture had good contrast so there weren't many artifacts. I put a white background behind it and didn't see many artifacts. I hope this helps a little