While I am confident in my photography skills, the area that I continue to feel like a novice is with regards to my use of Photoshop in my post-processing workflow. This is an area that I continue to try and learn something new every day. Well, today I tried something I’ve never done before. And while I am certainly not happy with the quality of the output, I’m willing to let it slide since it was my first time ever trying this technique. Specifically, I tried to extract the subjects from the background and apply a new background. Again, I’m not happy with the results of my first attempt but it does give me hope and encouragement that if refined and done well enough, this could actually work.
While the process is relatively straightforward, it can be time consuming. I also think it would be much easier with a stylus and tablet as opposed to the wireless mouse that I used to trace around the outline of the two subjects. The first step in the process was to extract the subjects and try to not do too much damage in the process. For the second step, I didn’t have any digital backgrounds to use so I created (tried to create;-) my own. And I tried my best to make it look like a muslin backdrop that you might find in a traditional studio. Again, what I ended up with is not necessarily what I would have preferred but the point of this exercise was to simply prove out the approach and process, not necessarily the end result.
Here is the original image, straight out of camera:
And here is the same image with a different background:
While replacing an image’s original background isn’t necessarily my preference or in line with my style, it’s important for me to feel confident using the tools available to me in order to deliver on each individual client’s expectation. So, what do you think?
