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Blurring the Background
I'm working on a project for a long term client that is not my expertise. My expertise is more cosmetic than masking/compositing, but I told her I'd try. What she wants is for the background to be blurred in a series of portraits. I've managed to get a decent mask, but now my problem is that it looks like a cardboard cutout once I blur the background. Does anyone have any advice? I tried slightly blurring the edges of the mask, but that looks terrible. I'm also masking it in so that it gradually goes from sharper to blurrier as you go from foreground to background as I thought that might help, but it doesn't. Help? (I cannot post the images as this is a commercial client, but if it helps, these are 3/4 length portraits with a background of a busy street lit by bright sunlight.) Thanks in advance for any advice! Jul 11 14 12:23 pm Link If you're using a mask, have you tried Refine Edge and feathering it? Either when you make the mask, or going back into it later. Jul 11 14 12:38 pm Link StephanieLM Retouching wrote: I can not tell you more , because I don't have your example to check, but in almost all cases ( especially when you have fly away hair on model ) the only way is to make very complex advanced mask with different blending modes and with full hair color and edge decontamination , without these steps it is almost impossible to get high end results, because fly away hair MUST stay sharp and in focus like model face. Jul 11 14 12:46 pm Link I always blur all, or part of an image on a separate layer, then take down the opacity, until I like the look. You can also use a very large, soft edged eraser to maintain, or enhance gradients. Also erase to edges with a much smaller eraser. I always add a little noise, in a careful way, so it matches the texture of the rest of the image before I take down the opacity, and merge that layer down. Here is one such example, from my MM portfolio. https://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/pic/34762292 -Don Jul 11 14 12:47 pm Link GK Retouching wrote: Yes, and it helps a little bit, but not enough. The whole thing just looks very faked to me; almost like the lighting doesn't match even though I know it does. The edges plus the blur weirdness add up to be a mess to my eyes. Jul 11 14 12:51 pm Link Luckily, there are few flyaways as most of them are men with slicked hair. There are some spikes, but not too bad to mask with channels. I am going to go try some of this advice and be back to report on the results. Thank you! Jul 11 14 12:53 pm Link StephanieLM Retouching wrote: Don't even try without very advanced mask , it won't work on hair with simple refine edge tool. Jul 11 14 12:57 pm Link ST Retouch wrote: What I'm doing is starting with a high contrast channel and then using blending modes and dodge/burn to enhance the channel. Then, manually refining with pen tool and a brush for the hard edges. That's the best masking I know to do. It seemed to do a pretty good job. I tried feathering at the very end to get a softer edge. It helped a little but I ended up undoing it because it didn't help very much. I felt my manual softening did a better job. Jul 11 14 01:06 pm Link Adding some noise and toning down the blur a little bit actually helped. Hopefully she's okay with both of those changes. It still doesn't look as good as in-camera blur, but I have a feeling nothing's going to look as good as in-camera. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Jul 11 14 01:20 pm Link http://youtu.be/WzZ_JZIElyo If behind the model hair is homogenous like sky ok, if not you will need to recreate the hair   Jul 11 14 01:21 pm Link There are leafy trees and lamp posts and buildings and all sorts of things behind the subjects' heads. It's all sorts of fun. Jul 11 14 01:26 pm Link Turns out my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. They are different lighting sources. It's just subtle enough I couldn't see it for sure until I hit a subject with glasses. No wonder it's highlighted when I split up the subject from the background. I'm not sure it's possible to make this look natural with mismatched lighting sources. :-/ Jul 11 14 01:50 pm Link Topaz labs makes this real simple. Jul 14 14 03:27 pm Link StephanieLM Retouching wrote: Yup. Jul 14 14 11:57 pm Link You can also paint on strands of hair on the edge with a very thin brush, or grab hair edg from a similar already masked out hair pic and put on top. Or use a hair edge from something with a white background and put on top using the darken tool. there are a lot of ways to do it its super time consuming and doesn't usually look 100% realistic but sometimes is the best they can get. also i would copy and paste, and then extend the background behind the masked subject just a bit. when blurring, if you catch any of the actual hair in the edge, it will blur that too and will make it look messy. you want to just blur the hair part. darken and lighting tools are really helpful to me for stuff like this. Jul 15 14 12:39 pm Link This won't help you out now, and I'm not sure how the photo was captured, but if she would have taken the shots with a fairly wide aperture (low f-stop number), then the background may have been able to be blurred in-camera. Here's a random shot I found as an example: http://www.genesismoss.com/blog/wp-cont … rs_app.jpg Jul 16 14 04:49 pm Link Duplicate the layer, use surface blur to blur the background so that the shapes are visible but not the details. Set the eraser opacity to 80% and flow to 30%. Erase the entire layer. Now set the opacity to 80% and set the brush to the softest setting and large enough to erase the main subject with just the feathered part of the brush extending slightly beyond the edge. Erase the entire subject this way. Reduce opacity to taste then use adjustment layers and masks to bring the saturation, contrast etc up to your liking. Jul 17 14 08:00 pm Link |
