Blending a cutout into it's new background.

[Lynny]

Ok, Guru's, share your secrets..... I've been playing with cutouts, you know cutting out tree's or houses or people, and wanting to plant them on new and exciting bckgrounds, and make them look as thou they were there all along..... what are your techiques for blending them in,

When we cut out stuff we use the lasso, and eraser, to get a hard clean edge, is there some way to, once you have an object, feather or soften the edges ever so slightly, that they will blend in well......Also any techiques you have for cutting out objects would be appriacated.

Hope you can help.

Lynny

[sfm]

I have been using the channels for my cut outs.......... look at your channels to see what part of your image that you want to cut out is clearest in, copy that channel, I mask that but can't get all of it or clearly see all of it so I have been going to edit apply image and set it to screen to make the other parts whiter and so that I can see what I want clearly sometimes I do this several times then I Gblur a tad, then select the channel go back to layers and copy and paste
sfm

[theKeeper]

hahaha, hey Sue... look down at your keyboard, just above the Alt key, and left of the righthand Shift key... see those small symbols that look like a period and a comma? Ya, well, that's what they are. They are really great for breaking up, or adding some breathing room in a sentence... or paragraph.
Try em... I think you'll find them quite handy indeed!

I almost fainted reading your extremely loooooong sentence, because i had no clues to tell me when i should breath. Starting from "I mask that..." [oops]

hehe :P

[sfm]

ha ha ha you had me looking at the keyboard then

I was testing you to see how fast you could read before you turned blue in the face he he he
sfm

[Stroker1]

I wrote Whispies, which a lot of people seem to like.

For most things, I like to paint the Layer Mask by hand. I can really whip them in a hurry. I did that marine in around 2 minutes if I remember correctly.

Other popular methods include Pen tools, Magic Eraser tools, and Extract. (Somewhere around here I was chatting about Magic Eraser and Extract.) That's just within PhotoShop. There are 3rd party tools to help with extracting subjects.

The best advice I can give is to do it in document. That is, drop your subject into place, then Layer Mask it. This tip alone can really help with pixel bleeding and halo control.

Okay, I have another bit of advice: learn the different ways of extracting. Every instance is different and will require individual attention. The bigger your Bag o' Tricks, the better.

[wbiss]

Great article/tute Stroker! I have saved that one for future experimentation. I'm like Stroker, Lynny...I've become quite good at painting my masks by hand... perhaps tedious for some, but it works for me. :\

[nitrobutler]

what I do is , after moving my subject onto a new background, I use a layer mask, then make sure my foreground color is BLACK then I use my paint brush to apply the blend. If you think you over blended then switch the foreground color to WHITE to undo the blend.

[Erik]

Depending on what you want, and if the subject isn't too complicated (like wavy hair), you can use the lasso etc, then make the selection shrink or grow abit, and finally step over to QuickMask mode. In this mode you can soften the edges where necessary with your brushes. Use lots of different ones for this; broad, soft edged ones are best, but even very small and hard ones can be handy.

[Alistair]

If it's a house or a shape where the computer can tell the diffrence between the background and that object you want (let's take a house for instance), I use the magnetic lasso tool, and go around it. Then I use the regular lasso tool to add or remove parts of the selected, to make it a perfect selection. Then when I copy that object onto a new landscape, I settle it in (erase lower parts, make it look like theres stuff in front of it), and then for touch up's I use gausian blur on the bottom part of the house very lightly to blend it a little more in. Then at the end, I use a couple options to make it realistic such as the shadow option under the blending options. That's all I do.