Photoshop CS5: Enhancing Backgrounds

- Photoshop CS5: Enhancing Backgrounds

In this video tutorial we will go over how to enhance backgrounds on portraits. We will go through how to select the subject and refine the edge, then isolate the background and enhance! Really good tutorial for bringing your portraits to the "next" level.

http://www.jhpvideotut​orials.com/?p=578

Best,
Jay

I fixed the link, sorry about that

Jay

Great Tutorial! Thanks

yes. I learned about painting over the hair to help define it in "refine edge"..Thanks!

Your very welcome and thanks for the comments!! That refine edge feature is incredible!!

Best,
Jay

Good technique for isolating the background and working with it separately from
the subject. I wonder, however, about your choice to increase saturation and
contrast in the background. Ramping up saturation is a standard way to attract
more attention to part of an image. With an informal portrait like this, it's
generally advisable to attract more attention to the subject, less to the background.

Notice in this example how fading the background -- reducing saturation and
contrast there -- pulls your eye more strongly to the subject.

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for some reason, I can always make the magnetic lasso tool work better than the one you used. if there is any space separating the subject from the background, IE: seeing the background through a ponytail in the hair or an arm on the hip, the tool you used is virtually impossible to make separate the background fully from the image. If you know a trick, please inform me!

Great tutorial!

Bookmarked. Will use this in the future. Thanks.

A good tutorial, but like Peano I was surprised about enhancing that background and thus drawing more attention to it.

I like the quick selection tool too, but often it's problematic with feathers (I photograph birds mostly) and with hair. What I then do is make a selection by choosing one of the channels. I choose the channel with the most light/dark contrast, duplicate that channel, invert it and use levels to increase contrast and then fill in areas where it's not completely black/white. This way even the finest of feathers/hairs are selected.

Yeah. Channels FTW when trying to mask hair.
Works way better then any kind of lasso.

http://dekedotcom.blip​.tv/

Yes, that's pretty much how I do it, except I always went straight to the channels themselves and didn't know you could combine two, so this was quite helpful and makes this method even better. Thanks for the link, René.

Thanks for the link

Thanks everybody for the comments, feedback, and discussion

The channels method is by far a better method for extracting, but it is much harder and more time consuming IMO than using the new refine edge features.

As far as taking away from the subject goes, it's all reletave to the scene IMO. Close-ups like your image is a great example of why you do Not want to enhance the background. However, on a fall foliage image with tons of brilliant colors taking up a large portion of the scene relative to the subject, I think it adds a little something to it Just my thoughts and it's more about the the method than anything. You can use this method of "enhancing" in a ton of different applications

Best,
Jay