What's Wrong With This?

[geecee]

This photo was taken with my G2. In Photoshop LE, I selected the flower using the Magnetic Lasso tool. Then I darkened and blurred the background and slighly increased the contrast of the rose. The selection was quite precise.

The Colour of the rose bleeds into the background slightly. Possibly not too noticable in this version but quite noticable in a larger version.

Can anyone tell me how to prevent this?

http://www.alphalink.com.au/~coward/gallery/img_0240a.htm

Graham Coward
Melbourne, Australia

[bigdave]

Try as you might, it's nearly impossible to select just the rose. I normally select just outside of the rose, that way you avoid the halo effect you see in your photo.

[Conk]

I'm thinking maybe play around some more and adjust the edge contrast. What are the settings when the Mag. laso tool is selected?

[henkbos]

Did you try to select a color range after selecting the rose with the lasso? Shouldn't be that hard? Not sure if you can do this in LE though.

Henk

[slejhamer]

It looks like you had the lasso tool set to feather quite a bit. If I use that tool, I keep the feathering at 0 pixels, then after the selection is made I feather 1 or 2 pixels depending on the subject. In my opinion the mag. lasso is okay for quick-and-dirty selections but is not very precise.


COMMENTS ADDED 12:03PM:

I just read Unixoid's comment below mine and realized that I didn't read the original post carefully. The problem is not necessarily with the selection, although it helps to have it as accurate as possible.

There is a very handy trick to blurring a background without causing the main subject's colors to halo. Read the following article and see if it helps: http://www1.photosig.com/viewarticle.php?id=193

[Unixoid]

The key here is in how you make the selection. The bleeding of the colors in this case occurs because the edge of the rose was darkened and blurred as the part of the background.

As was already suggested, you need to make a selection more carefully. I found that Procreate KnockOut plugin works particularly well when you need to separate background from the subject.

[Leighow]

Well.. I guess I fail this bleeding test, cause this rose looks darn good to me.

I would have said that it looks a bit like a cloth rose -- but never fake. Just a bit over the hill perhaps because this was not shot in sunshine.

I think that overall, it is as nice a rose as I have seen posted here.

[geecee]

Thanks all. I'll try some of your suggestions.

Graham Coward
Melbourne, Australia