This portrait's where I want it, but need help w/1 thing

[Steve S]

ok, I've got this B&W portrait about where I want it color/contrast-wise, but can't figure out how to deal with that blown out white bg area to the left of her head! Any ideas? Any and all suggestions welcomed.

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[PGB]

Its beyond my capability to explain how to do it but if you could get the pattern to the right of her head into the white area to the left I think that would be perfect.

Nice shot, I like it. She is very lovely.

 

[Chris101]

Hey! That one really does work nice! She's got a good, believable smile on and everything. I usually just accept the bald white background, and even seek it out on occasion, but if it bugs you, you could fill it in:

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[Steve S]

ok, wiseguy, that 's perfect!

I tried for an hr to get it believable, but got nuttin like your version, just carple tunnel. ok, spill it! How'd you do it? PS, thanks Patrick too!

 

[greyflash]

Before seeing Chris' version I would have said to leave it. Chris did an excellent job of filling it in and even has some stray hair to make it all the more believable. Good job Chris.

 

[Chris101]

Glad you like it Steve! (And thanks Gordon.) Patrick had it right - move the background from the right side over to the left side. Details:

* Select the white area with the Select > Color Range ... tool. Set the fuzziness fairly high, you want the selection to cut into the hair by only the very slightest bit. Don't worry about all the rest of the picture that gets selected.
* Deselect the parts of the selection that aren't the white background with the lasso and the option (alt) key held down. With this image it's easy to do - there will be a big gap between the part we want selected and the part we are de-selecting.
* Use the clone brush with a size about as wide as her finger, to move the striped background from the right side to the left. Be careful to keep it all aligned, and guestimate where it should be to line up with the pattern on the right. It needn't be perfect.

This almost finished it, but the smooth hairline on the left didn't fit with the frizzies she has on the right. So ...

* Select a rectangle around some of her hair frizzies on the right. Copy the selection.
* Create a new window the size of the copied portion (the default size) and paste the copied hairling into the new window.
* Do Image > Rotate Canvas > Flip Canvas Horizontal.
* Use Edit > Free Transform to rotate the hairline until it matches the angle of a portion of the left side of her head.
* Set the Clone Stamp source area in this rotated image. Pick a spot where the gray stripe changes tone right at the edge of her head.
* Go back to the image's window and de-select the rectangle of hair frizzies.
* Now brush in frizzies with a small clone brush. Be hap-hazzard about it, so it doesn't resemble the original.
* Do this with several different samples of frizzies. Keep the angle as true to the original as possible, and pay attention to the line of the stripes.
* Finally, use a small, hard History Brush with the history set to the state before the white background was cloned out. Carefully restore any hilights and lost detail from the inside of her hairline.

Then you are done.

 

[Steve S]

well...... ok then,

I'm *almost* sorry I asked. :shock: Looks like I've got my work cut out for me. I'll dive into this 1st thing in the morning when I'm fresh. Thanks so much for the detailed explanation, Chris! God, I hope I can do this... :?

 

[PGB]

Awesome!!!! This is exactly what I had in mind. I'm going to try this technique myself Chris.

Thanks,

 

[saturnine]

Re: well...... ok then,

I'm *almost* sorry I asked. :shock: Looks like I've got my work cut out for me. I'll dive into this 1st thing in the morning when I'm fresh. Thanks so much for the detailed explanation, Chris! God, I hope I can do this... :?

You can do it, Steve!

 

[greyflash]

I might give it a shot myself if I have time tomorrow.

 

[Steve S]

Almost there Chris, but you lost me at the end

Got to the last part, then DOH..... lost. Can you possibly elaborate on this section?
"* Set the Clone Stamp source area in this rotated image. Pick a spot where the gray stripe changes tone right at the edge of her head.
* Go back to the image's window and de-select the rectangle of hair frizzies.
* Now brush in frizzies with a small clone brush. Be hap-hazzard about it, so it doesn't resemble the original.
* Do this with several different samples of frizzies. Keep the angle as true to the original as possible, and pay attention to the line of the stripes.
* Finally, use a small, hard History Brush with the history set to the state before the white background was cloned out. Carefully restore any hilights and lost detail from the inside of her hairline."

 

[stm69]

Thanks for the advice Chris, it's really amazing what you did with that picture. I'm going to try the same with some of mine.

Sam

 

[Chris101]

I probably do a better job explaining with pictures, so start back a couple steps and select a rectangle full of frizzies:

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Copy the selection and create a new window. The size of the window will be the size of the rectangle you just copied:

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Paste the selection into the new window:

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Do a Flip Canvas Horizontal:

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Now the hair is almost in the correct orientation:

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But it's not quite right, so rotate the image until it matches the angle of her hairline on the left:

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Move the small window out of the way, and pick a Clone Stamp source point in the small window. I chose a place where the line between light and dark gray met ther hairline:

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Finally paint the frizzies from the small window into the image window with the Clone brush. I used a 9 px diameter brush:

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Notice this only did a third of the length of the hairline. Repeat the above steps with different areas (so it's more random) of frizzies until you've done her whole left side. The history brush part is just to clean up anything that got into her hair from the cloning that shouldn't be there.

ps, this is super, double-secret, tricks of the trade.

 

[greyflash]

Chris you never cease to amaze me.

 

[Steve S]

Your book: "Super Double-Secret, PS Tricks for Dummies&

will be a best seller! :lol: Thanks again for holding my hand, Chris! Not many would go to such lengths to "help a brotha" out! I can see where this tutorial will come in mighty handy in the future.
Precisely where I was stuck, was at the Cloning section and beyond to the finish. My cloning just wasn't believable, probably 'cause my clone tool was too big, and it didn't blend in very well with the newly created bg. I got so frustrated with it, that I didn't even get to the History Brush section at the end for the final cleanup. Will give it another go in a bit and report back. Thanks Teach! 8)
btw, her mom loved it! (even with the blown white bg)
She's always asking me for a B&W of her kids.

 

[Catz]

Good advice Chris...I was going to suggest the same thing. I do this often when helping others on the Retouching forum on dpr.

 

[Odonata]

First, great pic, nicely captured. I wish my portraits turned out like yours.

Second, thanks Chris for posting a play by play. I've done cloning to fix similar images but never got around to finding "a better way". This is very helpful.

Thanks to all for sharing.

-Eugene