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Adventures in Photoshop (or I'm Still Trying!)

Rachel Foster

New member
I'm still working with photoshop. Selection is very difficult for me in particular. I shot this lily today. As the untouched image shows, the background is undesirable.


IMG_4545.jpg


I did some contrast/exposure adjustment and then tried selecting the flower and using gaussian blur. My question is whether it just looks strange or if it improved it at all?

irismarked.jpg


After the selection (magic wand, feather and smooth) i increased by 5 pixels. It gives the iris a slight "glow" sort of feel. What I don't know is, again, does it simply make it odd?

Note: the effect is more subtle on the print than the posted jpeg.
 
I find the halo disturbing. I don't mind the background after the blur, but the selection line bothers me.

I tend to just work with the lasso tool at high magnification after using the magic wand to get the gross outline. But I'm no PS expert either ;)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Rachel,

l like the original! It has an interesting shadow and complementary rough texture to the background. I'd explore that too! :)

Asher
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Thanks, both. I'll try going higher mag with the lasso. The problem I have is scrolling down in high mag.

Asher I'd like the original if there weren't so many wrinkles.
 

JohanElzenga

New member
That halo has little to do with the way you use the lasso tool. It's the way Gaussian Blur works. Try to use Lens Blur rather than Gaussian Blur if you don't want that halo.
 

Rachel Foster

New member
The lens blur does work much better for eliminating the halo, but there seems to be a max limit to the amount of blur I can apply.

This version I used lens blur, tried the blur brush (with little effect), the smudge brush some (also not helpful) and then the dodge brush. This was the effect.

lensblur2acrmarked-1.jpg
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Bonsoir Rachel
Much better!
You may also try the following:
Once your selection is made, copy/paste it to make a new layer of it (on top of the original)
Then select the original layer and apply a "direction blur" using the same angle as the light of your BG.

As I don't know the real name of this filter in English, below is a hard copy of monitor…

Direction_blur.jpg
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Thank you, Nicolas.

As far as photoshop is concerned, I think I'm the proverbial tortoise...albeit a very, very old and slow tortoise.

P.S. I think that is "motion blur."
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Practice! practice!

Yes, it is motion blur. If you adjust carefully the angle and distance, you may get some nice and easy effect…
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Forget about who? Ha!

Thanks, again. Practice is required for something as complex as photoshop. On a related note, I now exclusively use Bridge to view/review images.
 

JohanElzenga

New member
The lens blur does work much better for eliminating the halo, but there seems to be a max limit to the amount of blur I can apply.

What stops you from using it more than once?...

I'm also sure that you didn't use it with maximum settings, because I can get much more blur than you got, still using the filter only once.
 

JohanElzenga

New member
Rachel, or can save your selection and apply Gaussian Blur only within it...

Nope, that is exactly the problem. Even if you blur a selection only, Gaussian Blur takes pixels from outside the selection to determine the edge effect. That is how Gaussian Blur works. Even if you would cut out the flower to a new layer, and then blur the background layer using Gaussian Blur, you would still get a halo. The only way to avoid that would be to fill up the cut-out space of the flower with the same color first.
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
......... Even if you would cut out the flower to a new layer, and then blur the background layer using Gaussian Blur, you would still get a halo. The only way to avoid that would be to fill up the cut-out space of the flower with the same color first.

okay, I forgotten: chose selection and copy as new layer, recall the slection and then apply gaussain blur.
 

JohanElzenga

New member
okay, I forgotten: chose selection and copy as new layer, recall the slection and then apply gaussain blur.

Aha, you select the background and copy that to a new layer, not the flower. That does indeed work if you load the selection again before you blur that layer (otherwise you will spill the background into the flower which is a kind of 'reverse halo').
 

JohanElzenga

New member
Well, this is one prime example where you don't need such a special (paid) plugin. Photoshop's own Quick Selection Tool has very little problems with something like this...
 

Rachel Foster

New member
I didn't figure out how to get a better lens blur (the max settings are eluding me), but this time I selected the lily out with magic wand. I copied the background to a new window, cloned out the spot where the lily had been. Then I used a heavy box blur to smooth the entire background. Going back to the original, I inversed the selection and copied the lily, which I then pasted to the new blurred background.

How did I do?


smalllilyboxpaste.jpg



I'm going to try it with the original image (which is a bit more complex in selection) now.
 

Nelu Goia

New member
Hi Rachel,
" Selection is very difficult for me in particular. ":) It used to be for me too, a while ago...
Now, in order to blur the background without affecting the main subject,the flower you need to :
1.Duplicate the background layer (Ctrl+J on a PC or Cmd+J on a Mac)
2.Use the Pen selection tool for such an easy subject and select the flower.
3.Ctrl (Cmd)-click the path to load it as a selection and jump it to a new layer (Ctrl+J or Cmd+J again).
4. Select the second layer (the background copy) and clone-out the flower.
5.Apply lens blur or Gaussian blur (lens blur works better for this job) to this layer only.
6. Additionally you can apply a curves adjustment layer to increase the contrast, as you prefer.
Have fun shooting!:)
Nelu
 

janet Smith

pro member
And the original...

smalllilyshadowboxblur1marked.jpg


Hi Rachel

I've photographed Cala lillies loads of times, I know how difficult they are to photograph, so much empty space around them, how best to show their wonderful shape....

In you're original version with the shadow, clearly showing us the sensual intricacy of the curves, you have achieved what I think is very difficult to do, beautiful, well done.
 

Rachel Foster

New member
I've been working on the lily some more. This time I duplicated the entire image and cloned out the lily. Then I applied a blur. Next, I did a shift-drop drag of the lily from the original image into the blurred copy.

It's getting closer to what I'm wanting. Unfortunately, downsizing has added some pixelation that is not in the full size so I'm putting it up fairly large.

bestlilyshadow.jpg
 

Rachel Foster

New member
The day has arrived that I thought I would never see.

It's almost as startling and newsworthy as seeing pigs fly.

I have successfully used LAYERS!
 

David Thomasson

New member
For the masking part: Duplicate the blue channel and apply levels to increase contrast (pull the end sliders in toward the middle). That will leave the flower almost solid black. You can select practically all of it with the magic wand, then go into Quick Mask mode and clean up anything the wand missed.

Blue channel after levels adjustment:

bluechannel.jpg


You can also create a mask for the shadow the same way.

Another way to blur the background without creating halos:
  1. Use the first mask to select just the flower.
  2. Copy that onto its own layer (Ctrl-j). Call that layer "Flower."
  3. Turn that layer off and go back to the underlying layer.
  4. Clone the flower out, sampling from the fabric around the flower. Clone out the shadow as well.
  5. Then apply G/blur or lens blur to that layer. Now that the flower and shadow are gone, they can't create halos.
After that, turn Flower back on. If you want to restore the shadow, use that mask on a new blank layer and fill the selection with black.

maskimage2a.jpg
 
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