hi guys, asking for a lil tip.

lets say i have a picture, its a nice one but the background is totally messed up. lots of distraacting stuff etc.

so i decide to put a layer of solid black as a background. so i put a solid black layer on top and then put a layer mask to show my subject.

but now, it appears too artificial, how do i edit so that it looks like the pic was taken with the black background? I think its how the light falls on the subject versus the blackness of the background.

thanks.

hi chris!

making it dark is easy, but to make completely black and still natural would be hard to post process. It's doable, but better do it in small steps.
Of course you have to make sure the light on the subject is suitable otherwise, like you said it become unatural.

Many make the mistake of using 100% brush weight or 100% opacity.
However, to make something natural it normally takes several steps to darken the background, eventually reaching total darkness, sometimes you don't even want it to go totally black since the results become unatural.

I would suggest you do the layers and masking using different layer properties, multiply, darken and play around with the opacity

Certain amount of darkness has to fall on the subject as well, so you have to increase the shadow values a little to make the edges blend smoothly into the background. I'd suggest taking a look at some low key portraits and study how the how the light plays on the subject's features and adjust accordingly

@christopher

i tried doing the black background once and end product wasn't so good... another option is to blur them out...

thanks din, i was trying to do it too and it was just too fake. thought about burn and dodge maybe but havent tried it out.

sucks to be a noob hehehe i dont even know 1/8 of what photoshop can do. need nino carandang to setup his photoshop sessions at bella duce soon hehehhe.

hi chris,

another option for you to consider is using plug-ins such as Extensis Mask Pro or Corel Knockout to drop out the person and moving him/her to another background. You also might want to check out the match color command in photoshop in order to match the colors of the source and destination photos. but since the destination photo is a black background, don't use this command.

with regards to how the light falls on the subject and the shadows that it creates, you have to this manually by dodging and burning the background and part of the person to blend him/her in the black ground.

i hope this helps.

thanks sir nino and sir enjoy. this would be a big task to undertake for my lil photoshop mind hahaha.

would tackle it soon :D

@nino

seems like I got lost there somewhere... I, too, need PS lessons...

hi guys, asking for a lil tip.

lets say i have a picture, its a nice one but the background is totally messed up. lots of distraacting stuff etc.

so i decide to put a layer of solid black as a background. so i put a solid black layer on top and then put a layer mask to show my subject.

but now, it appears too artificial, how do i edit so that it looks like the pic was taken with the black background? I think its how the light falls on the subject versus the blackness of the background.

thanks.
hi chris,

maybe you could upload your image and we could give your background a try.
i suggest just putting some shadows to it, if your black bg isn't pure black.. =)

thanks sir stanley, i would. i bought a book recently that had that effect all planned out. ill try it soon and see if i can do it. and then maybe put up a post about what i did as a simple tutorial for those who wanna learn how to do it.

thats assuming im successful of course hehehe.