Change background

[Ken Veal]

I have PSPro X.I want to change the background behind the bride and groom, what is the best and easiest way to do this.Please remember you are dealing with a novice here.......................Ken

[pdxrjt]

Not sure about X anymore as I generally upgrade to the newest version. I would (make a copy of the photo) select the area you want to keep, there are various tools for that (on the tools toolbar, on my system, it is the third icon down) such as free hand or magic wand.) After you select the area, you can "crop to selection" which is on the image bar. Alternatively, you can erase the background using an eraser tool..... but I am not sure if X has the tool "background eraser" but an regular eraser also works. The "background eraser" helps by being a bit "automatic" in helping you find edges. If X has it, read about the settings in the help file. If it were me, I'd probably erase the background as opposed to select the bride and groom, but results will vary with technique. Good luck.

[LeviFiction]

Version X does have the background eraser tool. Though it's limited with busier backgrounds so I would only recommend it if the bride and groom are on a simple background. If you use the background eraser tool might I suggest this tutorial on its use. http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html

That is the most complete, comprehensive tutorial on the brush I have ever found. Based my own video tutorial off of it.

However, I don't recommend you use the regular eraser tool. That's not to say you can't if you don't want to, it's just for something like this I would use a less or even non-destructive method.

The eraser tool changes the transparency of the pixels. And especially on soft edges it's a little harder to control. So it's not a big recommendation. For this type of work I'd use the selection tools and a mask.

First duplicate the photo and use selection tools to get a general outline of the couple, just like pdxrjt said. Then go the layers menu and select New Mask Layer and tell it to show the selection. This will immediately hide anything that was not selected. Now remove the selection by going to the selection menu and selecting None or hit the hot-keys. In your layer palette you should now have a new layer group with the couple and the mask layer inside. The mask layer is a greyscale image, though it should just be a black area with white in it.

With a mask the color black conceals portions of the image, and white reveals portions of the image. So the white area is the part of the photo you can see.

If you want to adjust the mask from there just grab your paint brush and set the color to white. Lower the opacity for gradual revealing (gray is used for translucent pixels) and just paint on the mask layer. This will allow you to reveal any areas you accidentally hid while using the selection tool. If you want to get rid of extra areas, change the color to black. It's that simple. Takes a while if you want to be perfect, but it's that easy to do.

[Ken Veal]

Thanks for all that info men, think that will keep me busy for many moons

[Ken Veal]

OK,
I think I have a rough idea what goes on now but I do have one problem after reading the JASC tutorial at http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html
on page 2 it shows the tool options palette-Basic Tools Settings" for the B/G eraser.I have no opacity, tolerance,sampling,limits,thickness or rotation showing.
Can you help please.

[Trev Bowden]

The tool bar is in two parts Look for that Double line just after Rotation and drag it out to see all the items

[Ken Veal]

Great !
Found the bars at another point, dragged them out but all that did was to move the options along so I dragged them downwards, some appeared below
then I dragged the row of icons along that were headed photo and web ( I think) to the right so now everything is showing except for the photo and web headings. Thank you ....................Ken

[LeviFiction]

Ken, was there a black triangle next to the double lines? This hides and shows extra options without having to resize the bar. Just saying.

[Ken Veal]

Dont recall any black triangle(by that do you mean a drop down arrow for more options?)The 2 lines I have are with the left one solid and the right one a sreies of small square dots, when hovered over a double ended arrow shows with "brush tip settings"When I now drag to the right it moves all the icons from opacity to ignore lightness along to the right

[LeviFiction]

Not a drop down triangle.



That kind of triangle.

[Ken Veal]

Thanks for the trouble you are going to here.No there was not a triangle as you described any where