-- 3 -- Cleaning them up

This series shows the slightly more complex process of selecting people from the background-- with some of the shadows still intact. The happy couple was photographed with the Nikon Coolpix 900 (see original photo) indoors in our living room/photo studio. Two 500 Watt halogen lights and a side light of 250 W highlights the couple.

a closer look at the coolpix 900 camera

To complete the Photoshop tricks section I thought I would focus on removing backgrounds behind people. Wisps of hair and unruly shadows make this a little more of an exercise even though the fundamentals still remain the same.

I first adjusted the photo by duplicating the layer a few times using the "screen" function at about 30%. This gently lightens it up without destroying the overall balance. Next I duplicated the layer twice. The plan is to remove the background from the top layer to within a few pixels of the difficult areas like whispy hair etc. The middle layer will then be used to fill in those difficult transition zones.

heads As shown here, when I used the Quickmask for the top layer, I wasn't too worried about getting every last hair in the transistion zone. Still in Quickmask mode I Gaussian blurred the mask (about radius 3.5) levels and then used the Adjust Levels menu to sharpen out the mask edge. This two step process smooths out any pixelated edges every time.

You have now successfuly removed the background, but the bodies and faces may look a few pixels little narrower than you would like. The three step process shown below will fix just that.

the coolpix 900 camera intro

TIP #2: The keeping-all-the-whispy-hair technique
Step #1: If you had only used the usual steps in removing the background, you would be left with rather plastic looking haircuts and narrower faces if you look closely. What we really want is that fine in-between information without having to remove the background pixel by pixel.	Step #2: In your middle layer (called "lightened" here) use the Adjust Layers menu and with the white eyedropper select the darkest grey you feel comfortable with. What it will do is make everything lighter white. Almost as if you had over exposed the photo. But the dark edges, the ones you are looking for, remain.	Step #3: Now click all the layers on (except the original un-retouched layer which I always keep for back up purposes). If you have any edges or corners you don't want, first remove them from the middle layer. Again you don't have to be too exacting because the top layer will cover any mistakes you make.	Step #4: The happy couple with all their hair intact. Wouldn't you be?