Just wanted to share some photoshop craziness with you all today. I've got a bad picture of my girlfriend's sister cheering at a football game. The girls were looking directly away from a pretty harsh sunlight and I had my crappy Sigma 100-300 DL lens loaded up so there wasn't much I could do with this shot.

What I ended up with is Image 1. Notice that the background is exposed more than the cheerleaders faces are (especially Emily's face on top) and that the background is also probably sharper than the girls' faces (I had to stop down the lens to not blow out highlights because of the direct sunglight)

Image 1:



On to Image 2. This is the same photograph but I cut the girls out and made a levels adjustment to their layer. I also made a high-pass layer of them and did an unsharp mask.
Then I blurred the background layer using the blur filter to give the effect of some DOF that was missing from the image to begin with.

Image 2:



Here's where the rest of you come in. Is there something different that you would have done to this image here? Some other trick that I'm not thinking of?

Thanks,

[LED]

I go for #2. In the first image the player's legs are distracting the focus from the cheerleader. Decreasing DOF with the blur filter also help to concentrate on the main subject.
The framing is good, could have been better without that "leg line" in the back.

[jshurak]

agreed with the leg line. Try zooming in really close and using the blur tool. I would probably do that over the outline of the in focus subjects.

[daacon]

Concur #2 is way better - you might try cloning out the players all together. Nice time if you can manage to get a shot looking up slightly that woul be a good angle I think (or even more downward)

[distorted_vision]

hmm, the 2nd shot is good, but the blurred background looks a little bit to processed to me.. it really looks like u have cut out the girls and plonked them onto a new layer. i think the blurr is a bit overdone and the girls are too pronounced.. i actually lean towards the 1st image in this case, but with the correct editing, the 2nd shot would be much more appealing.

[clarenceclose]

On to Image 2. This is the same photograph but I cut the girls out and made a levels adjustment to their layer. I also made a high-pass layer of them and did an unsharp mask.
Then I blurred the background layer using the blur filter to give the effect of some DOF that was missing from the image to begin with.

Here's where the rest of you come in. Is there something different that you would have done to this image here? Some other trick that I'm not thinking of?

Thanks,

My recommendations, if it would help:
1. Go back to your background layer beneath the cutout cheerleaders, before you put in the gaussian blur, i.e. the original, copy it to another layer and do a lens blur instead. Next use a layer mask on the lens blurred layer and use a gradiant black to white to reveal the more in focus foreground gradually fading to the blurred background. Play with this gradiant a bit to get what you want.
2. Copy the cutout cheerleaders to another layer and Image/adustment/shadow-highlight taking down the shadows a bit, to your taste. If highlights are a problem, also give them a touchup. Now make a layer mask of this one, click on the layer mask and Cntl-I to invert the layer mask, basically hiding what you have just done. Next get a soft edge large brush and setting your foreground to white and your brush opacity to ~20%, proceed to paint over areas of the cheerleaders that you feel would benefit from lightening. Don't do the whole thing unless perhaps as a first pass at 20% opacity, then just selective areas to give more depth to the ladies, i.e. lighter where the light would naturally hit them, rolling around to a little darker in the shadows.
Remember with the layer mask it is non-destructive so you can fix or redo things if they don't come out as you like.
Also, sometimes when you isolate a subject from the background, then blur the background, the subject blur shows up at the edges. With the judicuous use of the liquify/push filter at the edges of the subject matter on the blurred layer, you can literally stuff that blurred edge back under your isolated subject above, taking away some of the obviousness of your cut subject.
3. Lastly you will want to put a slight blur on the edge of your cutout subject, 1-2 pixels, to soften the transition. Cntl-click on your cutout should give you a selection all around your cutouts. Select/modify/contract to shrink the selection 1-2 pixels. Blur tool to go around the edges.
See if this helps your presentation and post the change so we can have a look.
Clarence

[raz-0]

In addition to what was alredy said, it loks like your background image still has the cheerleaders in it. You can see their guassian blurred appendages poking out from behind them even in the small image.

I suggest either cloning in grass in the background image (doesn't have to lok that good, you are going to blur it anyway), or you enlarge the foreground cheerleaders/shrink the whole background so that you can get a clean composite.

[Tom Lusk]

It took a cheerleader to draw Clarence out of hiding!

Hope you're doing well, Clarence.

paden- you're getting some good feedback here. What were your original settings?

[paden501]

It took a cheerleader to draw Clarence out of hiding!

Hope you're doing well, Clarence.

paden- you're getting some good feedback here. What were your original settings?

On the camera? Shot in RAW and converted to DNG when I took it off the camera. From there it went into PS.




Thanks all for the comments. I'll take a look at it sometime this weekend and maybe post up another revision.

[spyglass]

From looking at the shot as a whole, I think that I would avoid the whole cheerleader cutting out approach and adjust the levels to lighten the whole picture (the white should pop nicely, and the green grass would look much better). Then go into shadow and highlight (image adjustment in PS). I would leave the field clear, but add some light blurring to minimize the wall of legs in the background.

[spyglass]

Hey Paden501,

I spent about 15 minutes on your shot just to give you some ideas. A little more time and effort and you can make it look a lot more convincing.

[G M Fude]

Sort of off-topic, with apologies -- but I guess that's the same Bethel that features at the end of the current box office hit I Am Legend? Or are there a whole bunch of Bethels in the USA, sorta like Springfield.

[paden501]

New version. Clarence -- your instructions are amazing. Thank you very much.. I'm so happy with this picture now!




Thank you all for your helpful insight.