BG Change - Help

Hi

I did my first Fashion Shoot on Sunday 6-6-2010. It was a TF shoot and turned out OK, but I didn't get to use my lighting or BG because another photographer had setup the studio while I was at the MUA's shop.
Anyways, the lighting was not very good.
They used a white Muslin BG . They also used a vinyl walkway. The seam between the two was horrid, so I did what I could with it.

Here's a test shot of the BG. I have CS5, but my Topaz remask is having some kind of memory error and wont open. I think it might be an incompatibility issue with CS5 ?
I need to add a BG to about 30 images before I can finish them. Any help, tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the help in advance.

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Are you working in 32 bit or 64 bit, if 64 you might want to try 32 bit with your plugin. Another option with CS5 is to use the "Quick Selection" tool and the new and very improved "Refined Edge" option within that tool.

lehayes wrote in post #10330661
Are you working in 32 bit or 64 bit, if 64 you might want to try 32 bit with your plugin. Another option with CS5 is to use the "Quick Selection" tool and the new and very improved "Refined Edge" option within that tool.

64 bit. Every-time I use the refine edge, it looks worse ? I must be doing something wrong. Thanks

Well, that image is not so easy to mask...
Do you need to repair the BG, or replace it with something else entirely (color / tone wise)

"Repair" doesn't need such a great selection...

Masking would require a few masks that are added together, since different parts of the image have different contrasts between the model and the background...

Q&D, with a lot of jpg artefacts showing in the mask:

Rene is correct, this is not an easy image to mask especially since there is little contrast between the background and the model's hat and top.

Depending on the end purpose there are several solutions. You can try using the Blend-If sliders to replace the background. Otherwise you'd have to use Calculations, Channel masking or some of the more advanced selection techniques.

A few months back someone posted a tutorial using Lightroom to shift colors to make a greyscale image. If you can find it; the tutorial might help a lot. If you posted a hi-res version I'd give it a shot but I can tell you that replacing 30 backgrounds is going to take a fair amount of time.

Look at the video in the first post in Selecting areas in PS.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #10337795
Look at the video in the first post in Selecting areas in PS.

That was great.
Thanks for the link and thanks to everyone for your ideas and help

lehayes wrote in post #10330661
Are you working in 32 bit or 64 bit, if 64 you might want to try 32 bit with your plugin. Another option with CS5 is to use the "Quick Selection" tool and the new and very improved "Refined Edge" option within that tool.

I searched the Topaz Labs sight and removed the program completely. Downloaded the latest version of Mask 2 and did a reinstall. It works
All the Topaz Labs stuff is 64 bit compatible. Thanks.