Photoshop Guidance Please

[G B-S.]

Dear all,

I would like to superimpose a picture of a Kite over a picture of a viaduct and have suitable photographs of both subjects.

The problem/challenge – I have no idea how to do it.

Could some one be kind enough to take me through the process step by step.

I have Photoshop CS2 running on a Mac

Regards Gordon.

[Saphire]

Gordon, if we could see the photos I will be only to willing to give you a helping hand.

Hi Gordon

the first part of the task is to do a virtual cut out of the kite, equivalent to using a pair of scissors or a stanley knife on a piece of paper. CS2 (I have cheap version PSE4) has a number of tools for doing this, but unless the bird is clear and sharp edged against a background of a totally different colour, it is safest to use the 'polygonal lasso tool' which is hidden in the main toolbox>lasso tool (which looks like a cowboys lasso), which you press and then go down to the polygonal option. This then works just like scissors cutting out the outline. When you have completed the selection, copy and paste which you will find takes it to a new layer. From the same source, there is the 'magnetic lasso' which allows you to follow an edge making fixed points at abrupt changes of direction or ambivalent positions en route.

I am one of the few mac users on the forum and for this I would prefer to use a very cheap programme called 'Color-it', in which the polygon works properly whereas the PS one tends to jump to where it thinks you want to go. If you find you have missed a feather tip firsttime, don't despair. You can add more pieces as you go along.

Lastly if like other mac users you are profoundly irritated by all the PS tool boxes, bins and general clutter, you can kill off the lot (1) drag the layers pallette away from the ones above it (2) open a file (3) press tab & this gets you the image and nothing but the image on screen. You then need to press the 'tools' and 'layers' windows in the window menu (could be a different menu in CS2) to reinstate those windows only. Likewise if you need tool settings, you may need to reinstate the 'tool options' bar.

See if you can get your kite out and selected. It is then a normal cut and paste onto the other image, except that in CS2 you may find it easier to do scaling and any other fine tuning in its home file next to the destination file before copy.(This is because if you are trying to do this in one layer over a background, you need a lot of 'layers' skills). In Color-it all the tools work on the selection only so you can paste first and do the scaling, lighter/darker etc against the destination background easily.

Do keep coming back for help as needed. The layers in PS are a pig, but are its strongest point and raison d'etre once you have got them sussed.

[G B-S.]

Dear Christine,

Thank you for your prompt reply.
You really caught me on the hop with your generous offer
.
Here are the two photographs.

What I am hoping to achieve is to have the kite as the dominant feature ,with the valley where it /they live as the background.

Very much looking forward to the result

Kind regards Gordon

[G B-S.]

Dear Chris,

Thank you for the lengthy letter.

You have now got me sploshing about all over the place in CS doing the “what if thing?”
Not getting very far mind you but thoroughly enjoying my self.

Kind regards Gordon.

[Birdsnapper]

Gordon, that's a terrific photo of the kite - I think that it stands by itself - just tweak 'shadows/highlights' and apply a bit of USM.

If you want to add the kite to the viaduct then try this:-

Open both images in reduced sized windows so that you can see both.
With the arrow icon, click on the bird and, holding down the mouse button, drag it to the other image, where it will become a new layer.
Set the bird layer as current and use 'extract' (you'll need to experiment with this) to isolate the bird from its background.
Clean up odd bits of the bird's outline ('extract' doesn't always work perfectly).
Use 'shadows/highlights' and USM on the bird.
Open the viaduct layer and apply 'Gaussian blur' (radius about 1.0), which will nicely blur the background and make the bird stand out a bit more.

Sounds a bit daunting, but if it were easy then it wouldn't be fun!!!!

OK Gordon, should have waited for pic

the background to the kite is sufficiently homogenous to select with 'magic wand' with tool options set to about 4. Then inverse selection, copy and paste which will go to a new layer. But there are one or two grey bits within the bird that you then have to select with the rectange marquee and copy and paste. Then merge bird layers till nowt missing. Then tidy edges with eraser set fine. When doing final select also reduce the selection by 1 pixel.

You now have bird ready to copy and paste onto background....but it is too big and too well defined for realism and light is from wrong side.

At this stage I lost patience with PS (as I usually do, the idea of someone enjoying using it I find bizarre, but Christine can take over)

A suggested draft reversing bird, scaling to 80%, lighten about 10% and increase contrast back 5% looks like this (but done in Color-it). When you have bird where you want it, you will possibly find a few odd pixels around fringe that need copying to bird or new background colour.

http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...1&d=1186509668

[Saphire]

Gordon, Here is my finished result I have reduced the kite so that it doesn't quite overpower the photo.

This is how I did it.

First of all I had both images open.

I worked on the landscape first
1. Levels, I pushed both outside sliders until they gave a setting of
32-1.03-2.0
The photo of the kite.

1. because the image was clean I was able to just use the simple magic wand to pick out the background, I only had a few stray pixels to pick up.
2. I then inversed the selection for the kite.
Next
3. Shadow/Highlight tool, (My favorite)
Shadow = 45%
Tonal = 44%
Radius = 30%

4. I then did a copy of the kite and pasted it into the landscape.
It looked a little big so changed the Width to 60% and the height to 60%,
the boxes come up automatically at the top of the page.

5. selected the kite layers and used the blur tool around the edges so they would blend in better.

Next.
6. Flatten layers
7. Unsharp mask.
Amount 170%
Radius 2.

I hope you can understand what I have written.

[Birdsnapper]

Fascinating - three different ways of doing it.
Chris, it took me 10 minutes - no time to loose patience. The fun is not using PS, but in creating a new image. I can't paint, but I can manipulate images in PS - a poor substitute, but it's all I can do.

[G B-S.]

Dear all,

I have just come in after a stroll round the estate, the evening light was beautiful, to find a plethora of considered replies.

Tomorrow after visiting the market I will start exploring the suggestions you have presented and let you know the outcome. It will take me some time. It is a steep learning curve!

Thank you all for the time you have spent I am very impressed as well as grateful.

Speak to you soon.
Gordon.