Pixalo Photography Community - View Single Post - how to change background on portrait photo

Rob Barron · 04-01-2008, 16:49

If it's a plain or fairly plain background, you can also use another method:

~ Make a new layer underneath and fill it with the colour you want
~ Use a blending mode to bring the BG colour through the old colour. Experiment because you'll find different modes work well in different situations.

This mode doesn't work so well if there are the same colour tones in the picture as the BG as they get blended as well.

In order to stop the BG looking too clean-cut, you can make a mottled BG first....

~ Select a FG and BG colour that work together, a light and dark cream for instance.
~ Go to Filters > Render > Clouds
~ Go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur it to a softer blend as per your own taste.

There you go, a mottled BG as good as using a background in a studio... well, almost

There are hundreds of ways of doing BGs and the one I would use a lot less is cutting the subject out, that is a bit of a fag, even using the Extract tool. But it can be very useful with the mottled BG effect above because you can then apply a drop shadow to your subject which then separates the subject from the BG better and more naturally. Use a very sift shadow, not too harsh.

Have fun playing

Cheers,
Rob

04-01-2008, 16:49	#4 (permalink)
Rob Barron Loves the place Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Poole, Dorset Posts: 5,388	Re: how to change background on portrait photo If it's a plain or fairly plain background, you can also use another method: ~ Make a new layer underneath and fill it with the colour you want ~ Use a blending mode to bring the BG colour through the old colour. Experiment because you'll find different modes work well in different situations. This mode doesn't work so well if there are the same colour tones in the picture as the BG as they get blended as well. In order to stop the BG looking too clean-cut, you can make a mottled BG first.... ~ Select a FG and BG colour that work together, a light and dark cream for instance. ~ Go to Filters > Render > Clouds ~ Go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur it to a softer blend as per your own taste. There you go, a mottled BG as good as using a background in a studio... well, almost There are hundreds of ways of doing BGs and the one I would use a lot less is cutting the subject out, that is a bit of a fag, even using the Extract tool. But it can be very useful with the mottled BG effect above because you can then apply a drop shadow to your subject which then separates the subject from the BG better and more naturally. Use a very sift shadow, not too harsh. Have fun playing Cheers, Rob __________________ Rob Barron robbarron@aol.com If you look down on other people, don't expect them to look up to you!