Help with PP needed - Make background white, remove stray hairs.

Just playing around with the photo below. I know its preferential to do these things while shooting but it was a last second thing and trying to make it a learning experience.

1) since I didn't have lights hitting the background is it possible to whiten it up? If so how

2) How do I get rid of the many stray hairs around her head? Everything I try just makes a smudgy mess

3) for those with calibrated monitors how far off am I?

4) Any other criticisms are appreciated.

using lightroom and PS5

domat wrote in post #12499925
Just playing around with the photo below. I know its preferential to do these things while shooting but it was a last second thing and trying to make it a learning experience.

1) since I didn't have lights hitting the background is it possible to whiten it up? If so how

A masked Layer to isolate your adjustments to the background

domat wrote in post #12499925
2) How do I get rid of the many stray hairs around her head? Everything I try just makes a smudgy mess

Since you just want to remove them against plain background the Eraser tool should work just fine, using a layer with the hair masked. Or you can use the Smudge tool to blend them into the background. You can probably just select the background and make a mask then apply a Gaussian blur which will probably blend those fine stray hairs away. Otherwise Content Aware Healing Brush. There are probably a dozen ways of doing it.

domat wrote in post #12499925
3) for those with calibrated monitors how far off am I?

You've got a Harsh shadow in the upper left corner that is out of place. You also have a Shadow cast by the subject that could stand a little fading and lightening up a bit.
Maybe even the crop out so she and the baby aren't so far to the left.

domat wrote in post #12499925
4) Any other criticisms are appreciated.

using lightroom and PS5

I think you could have increased the exposure a little more also.

I recommend becoming very familiar with CS5. Working with Layers and Layer masks should become very familiar to you.

http://tv.adobe.com …otoshop-cs5-feature-tour/

http://tv.adobe.com …EB602CBA3626ED4​9339053505

It's also advisable to calibrate your monitor, If you don't have the hardware to do it, I.e. Spyder3 Pro. Then there are web sites with the test patterns needed to get it right, or at least very close anyways.
http://www.displaycali​bration.com/
http://www.lagom.nl/lc​d-test/

Here are two quick attempts; I didn't spend a lot of time since this is a rather low resolution file. Quick a bit more could be done with a hi-res JPEG or a Raw file. The first version adds a white background as requested and a bit of painting with light to lift some of the shadows. However, in my opinion a white background is too stark.

Oops...I just realized that I goofed in extracting the adult's left arm...lol.

PixelMagic wrote in post #12500210
Oops...I just realized that I goofed in extracting the adult's left arm...lol.

I like your background, however, with the lighting obviously coming from one side, perhaps a soft drop shadow would also work.

tkerr wrote in post #12500236
I like your background, however, with the lighting obviously coming from one side, perhaps a soft drop shadow would also work.

Excellent suggestion. I simulated a cast shadow in this version but since I didn't plan for that it shows the flaws in my mask.

nice work PixelMagic. Looks great. But How did you do it? I would be grateful for any tips that lead me to it. Every time I try to select something like that it looks terrible.

Tkerr- Thanks for the info. I will look into the calibration sites you posted.

I don't think its possible to lighten the original background without doing significant work so its just easier to swap out the entire background. There are several ways to select subjects/objects in Photoshop; in this case because of a lack of definition between the subject and background I used the Pen Tool to create a path around the subjects then converted the path into a saved selection or alpha channel. Then I duplicated the Blue channel and used it to create a a channel mask of the woman's hair. Finally I combined the selections into one and used it to mask the subjects. Then I created a new layer and imported a new background into the new layer.

domat wrote in post #12500637
nice work PixelMagic. Looks great. But How did you do it? I would be grateful for any tips that lead me to it. Every time I try to select something like that it looks terrible.

Tkerr- Thanks for the info. I will look into the calibration sites you posted.

domat wrote in post #12500637
nice work PixelMagic. Looks great. But How did you do it? I would be grateful for any tips that lead me to it. Every time I try to select something like that it looks terrible.

Tkerr- Thanks for the info. I will look into the calibration sites you posted.

Those Video Tutorials I also posted links to will lead you to the ability to do that kind of thing. It's a matter of using layers, Selections, Masks and Layer Styles in CS5 for different kinds of compositing.

Here is another web site with all kind of tutorials. What he does may not seem like what you want, but after a while you will see that everything he does is what you can apply to your images in one way or another.
http://www.planetphoto​shop.com/category/tuto​rials

And then there is also the Russell Brown Show which has some great tips and tricks.
http://www.russellbrow​n.com/tips_tech.html