Photoshop for All: RE: [photoshop-beginners] Slide help neede

After a bit of work, here is what I came up with:

1. I duplicated the image twice, ( I wanted to leave the original background intact in case I made any mistakesJ )

2. The top copy became my foreground, and I created a selection to separate the girls and the bridge from the background.

3. I saved the selection, then created a mask.

4. I converted the copy that was to be the background to a Smart Object.

5. I applied a Gaussian blur to it. Since it was a Smart Object I could adjust the blur as I went along.

6. I ran into a problem, the girl’s outline was not as sharp as I expected, I found some unexplained blurring along their outline.

7. I realized that when I blurred the background, as the girls were in it as well. The blur “leaked” the outline of the girls beyond the edge of their foreground outline. That is looking at the image you had a little of the blurred version of girls showing beyond the sharp edge of the foreground.

8. There were a lot of ways to solve it, but the easiest way requires CS5 and up.

9. I deleted the background and created a new copy for the background.

10. I then loaded the selection I had made and inverted it.

11. I then used “Content-Aware” fill on it.

12. The fill did not look good J, but, in this case it did not matter since it would be covered up by the foreground.

13. I again made the background a Smart Object, and ran the Gaussian filter. This time there was leakage to spoil the foreground.

14. I then created a Levels adjustment for the foreground, and linked the two layers together. I did the same for the background layer.

15. Using Levels, I darkened the foreground just a bit, and I lightened that background just a little bit.

16. By blurring the background and lightening it, I was able to separate the girls from the background.

17. I save it as a jpeg and reloaded, ( I realize, now, that since I had saved the psd I could have just flattened the image, being sure to save under another name)

18. I went into LAB mode to spiff the colors up a bit.

19. Converted back to RGB and save as a jpeg.

One point, when you create a selection, save it before you use. It save having to redo it if you find you need it again.

JohnW

-----Original Message-----
From: photoshop-beginners@yahoogroups.com [mailto:photoshop-beginners@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of johnb163@bellsouth.net
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2012 1:50 PM
To: photoshop-beginners@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [photoshop-beginners] Slide help neede

I am scanning old slides and need some advice with PS. Here is a link to a jpg (the original is a large TIF file) of one of the photos.

http://www.pbase.com/jhb_photography/image/144620230

The background to too bright. I want to darken the background, while not touching the girls. I thoght about using the "burn tool", but thought someone might know of a better way.

Any suggestions?

JohnB

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