Figure 2. Making the Selection The subject was selected using the Lasso tool with the selection type set to Smart Edge. The Feather value was set to zero and the box labeled Antialias was checked. For more complex subjects, see the tutorial titled Making Selections With Masks. After making the selection save it to an Alpha channel or better yet to disk to load it at a later session. Then copy the selection As a New Image and keep the background neutral so that you can see the results as you apply the effects to it. |
">
">
">
">
Creative Techniques - Embedding Images Copyright 2003 - JMA - All Rights Reserved |
Whenever I'm in a discussion about image editing software, one question that is always certain to come up is "If I give you my picture can you put me in a different setting like a scenic background or on a beach?" To those of us who are familiar with photo editing techniques, this seems like a tired old trick, and yet few people can do it convincingly. More often than not, novice users of photo editing software concentrate on extracting the object from its original background and forget some of the key elements necessary to combine two or more images together, these being image resolution and lighting. It is intuitively evident that blending very high resolution objects with low resolution backgrounds or vice versa, will produce less than convincing results. Likewise, putting a brightly lit subject in a night scene, or the reverse, will produce results somewhat similar to those we achieved in our childhood years when we cut out pictures from a magazine and pasted them together to make a collage. When images differ in resolution, the answer is rather simple. Reduce the higher resolution image in increments, until the eye can no longer distinguish between the two images. With lighting, the answer is a little more complex, partly because there are other issues that may need to be looked at, such as the time of day that each image was taken, the presence of shadows and color saturation of the two images. This is not to say that if lighting conditions aren't exactly identical you should not attempt to merge the images together. On the contrary. Photo editing software is about editing images and PSP 8 offers some of the best tools for manipulating almost any kind of effect that you can imagine. In this tutorial, rather than simply moving a subject from one background to another, I thought that we would try something different. We will merge a modern day image of a young girl, with a painting by F.M. Bennet depicting early 1700s colonial America. |
">
">
">
">
Figure 1. The Raw Images The background image will be this painting of the early 1700s in colonial America. The subject will be the youg girl, taken from the image below. We will seat the girl in the chair next to the fireplace and to add a touch of realism, we will apply some painted effects to the image of the girl to make her blend more naturally in the painting. |
Keeping the image of the painitng in mind, the girl was photographed in a direction looking away from the camera. In the final image, her position will provide the illusion that she is looking at the other men in the painting and is actively partaking in the conversation. |
Figure 2. Making the Selection The subject was selected using the Lasso tool with the selection type set to Smart Edge. The Feather value was set to zero and the box labeled Antialias was checked. For more complex subjects, see the tutorial titled Making Selections With Masks. After making the selection save it to an Alpha channel or better yet to disk to load it at a later session. Then copy the selection As a New Image and keep the background neutral so that you can see the results as you apply the effects to it. |
Figure 3. Adjusting the Lighting As I mentioned earlier, we want to give the subject a painted look so it will blend better with the background. The first step to this technique is to adjust the lightness levels of the subject by applying the Levels command with the settings shown. Different subjects may require modifications to these settings, but in general these settings will work well. |
Figure 4. Softening the Image The next step is to soften the image by removing all black and white specs, such as those caused by dust on film or scanned images, and without loosing any detail. A great filter for this purpose is the Salt and Pepper filter. Here the filter was applied with the settings on the right. For this image, a seeting of 3 for Spec Size and Sensitivity worked well. You r subject may require higher or lower settings. When applying the filter, zoom the image to 100% to see the effects of the filter more clearly. |
Figure 5. Bringing Out the Detail. At this point, we want to bring out some of the highlights and detail in the girl's hair and clothing. To do so, we apply the Clarify filter. Since the Clarify filter can only be applied to the entire image and not a selection, we need to remove the selection marquee from the subject using the keyboard key combination <Ctrl D> or you can use Selections > Select None command on the Main Menu bar. Apply the Clarify filter at full value (5), as shown. |
Notice how the neutral background color allows you to see the effects of each filter far better than a simple white background. |
Figure 6. Balancing Lightness Between the Images Now we want to check the lighting of the subject against the ligthing in the painting. To do this we need to place both images on the screen and adjust the lighting of the image containing our subject (the girl) until it matches that in the painting. The easiest way of course is to use the Levels command. For this image, moving the center diamond slider to the left, to a value of 1.50 and the Right diamond slider to a value of 2.50 produced the desired results. |
Figure 7. A Painted Look We can now enhance the look of paint in our subject by sharpening the high contrast edges using the Unsharp Mask filter. Select the USM filter using Adjust > Sharpness > Unsharp Mask. In the USM dialog box the Radius was set to 2.00, the Strength to 115 and the Clippig value to 5 to produce the best results for this image. |
Figure 8. Chair Arm Selection In the background image, we need to select the parts of the chair that would normally be in front of the girl when she is sitting in it. There are two ways of doing this. We can place our subject in the chair and see what parts become covered or simply select a little more than we need. I prefer the latter, because it allows me to better control when I paste the selection beack into place. Confused? Don't be. You'll see as we move along. First a selection is made of the chair arm, the back edge and part of the seat. Then a new image is created from the selection, using Edit > Copy > Edit Paste > As a New Image command. |
Figure 9. Subject Placement Using the Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste > As a New Layer command, the image of the girl was then copied onto the image of the painting. The using the Deformation tool, the girl was resized to fit proportionately into the painting. Finally, the Move tool was used to move the image of the girl left, right, up or down as needed to achieve an acceptable seated position. |
Figure 10. Adding Shadow Detail Paying attention to detail is an important part of any image editing technique. Notice where the girl is sitting. This is a high shadow area and we need to paint in the shadows on the back of girl's clothing and at the floor near the sneakers. For the shadow color, an area was sampled near the wall underneath the seat of the chair. This produced a grayish tone composed of the Red, Green and Blue values shown. A soft Paint Brush with the Opacity set at 25 was used to apply the shadows to the areas designated by the arrows. |
">
">
">
">
Figure 11. Replacing the Chair Section Once the shadow details have been completed, we can copy the section of the chair that was selected in Figure 8. back into the painting As a New Layer. Then using the Move tool the chair section can be positioned into place. Notice that now the arm of the chair will be in front of the girl's image, as it would be in real life. |
">
">
">
">
Figure 12. The Final Image - In the final image we can see that the girl actually appears as if painted by the artist himself. We can almost hear her say. "Hey, how about another Brew--skee." |
">
">
">
">
