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How to smooth out edges of people I cropped out of another photo and placed in a different background?


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Hello,

 

Ok so I have a photo of my husband and I that I want to crop and paste into a nicer background photo. I selected, cropped us out of the original photo and pasted us into the new background photo. Thats as far as I got!

 

The only thing is that lines are really rigid and not very smooth and clean looking of us. I want it to look like we naturally took the pic there. How can I do this to our selection and not the entire background? 

post-18573-0-44303500-1442854380_thumb.png

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You have to tweak it manually with the Matte brush in the Refine dialog, painting over the details that doesn't look right (take a look at your husband shirt near the dish on the left for example). You may also need to adjust the exposure and colours to better match the new environment. Currently you and your husband are a little too "bright" compared to the surrounding area. All those details help to blend both images seamlessly.

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Would probably have to see the original photo to see what you're working with, sometimes quick masking techniques do not do the job as you might think it should. Its preciseness actually still depends on the photo and if there's enough contrast in your picture in order for this to work. You may have to use basic techniques which means painting on the masks versus quick masking.

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Oh lord. Ok so now I don't know why I have a black outline around us. I have removed all of effects and it still has a black outline.

 

As for tweaking at it, can I do it while its in the new background or do have to go back to the original photo again? For some reason it doesn't smooth out when try to select that option. 

 

Ive been working at this for 3 days now. Sad huh?

 

I attached both photos in here for you to see what I am working with. Please help!

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It looks like you have a pretty good photo to work with so the problem areas is the edges that are blurry resulting in the jaggedness you see in your finished version you posted. The main thing to do here is to refine the edge but MANUALLY. Like I said it means painting the edge to get the smooth edge that will look good once you place in the party picture. Make sure, if you start with the quick selection brush to select the mask button in the layers panel and then work inside that mask to refine it using the brush tool, and also only using black and white colors. Check out the https://youtu.be/EKXY83FuNjE video and this is the technique I mean. Its a PS video but you are doing the same in Affinity Photo. At the end of the video is the part where he refines the edge by painting the edge with the brush. BTW the softer edge the brush the softer the edge of the mask.

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Ok so I am following the youtube video you sent me of Photoshop but I am getting stuck at the new layer fill area.

 

Here are my steps so far:

 

  • Opened my picture of my husband and I
  • did the selection tool 
  • created new layer mask within the selection

 

Then I get stuck on the fill layer because I can't select it white and if I deselect our main one then our  it will look like a cut of us rather than a white background.

 

If someone can guid me step by step, I would really appreciate it. 

post-18573-0-26645300-1443040535_thumb.png

post-18573-0-40649500-1443041113_thumb.png

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  • 1 month later...

Ok so I am attaching the pictures here:

  1. Background.jpg (Erase the man out of the sitting at the table)
  2. Remove all background.jpg (Place us in the "background" image 
  3. "Screen shot" is a horrible sample of how id like it to come out. Id like it to look like were actually standing there please. For some reason the plates and other things got distorted a little.

Please make sure to make me look a little thiner but not too obviously thinner and thiner arms. do the same for JM as well please. I am so excited about this! Thank you so much!!

 

I couldn't load the other affinity file but here is the link to download it:

http://expirebox.com/download/330ab4efb9bc571ec8fe95cc45acdf74.html

 

post-18573-0-17366800-1446211128_thumb.jpg

post-18573-0-46620300-1446211320_thumb.jpg

post-18573-0-04346100-1446211457_thumb.png

Perfect Selection cut out.afphoto

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I'm sorry, the pictures are of no use to me. You have attached your selection and your attempt to put it in the background.

 

I need the background  and the couple where you haven't erased the background.

 

I thought you question was to show you how to do a selection and place it in another background, not to make you slimmer. 

I'm very sorry, I don't do that.  If that's what you want, I think you must ask someone else.

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

MacBook Pro 16 GB
MacOS Sonoma 14.1.2

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Hi

Some basic tips to make it easier (or, less hard) to do the cutout:

 

- Before doing any cutouts, place the image of you two as a new layer over the background image. Rotate it, adjust the size and position (approx).

 

- Make as good selection as you can with the Selection brush tool. Remember, the size and movements of the brush influence how "big" the selection is (slow, short movements = better precision).

 

- With the selection active, click the button "Refine…". In the dialog, set the preview to "Transparence". Now you can better see how the edges blends into the background.

 

- Brush over the "bad" edges. Start with the brush in "Matte" mode - if that does not work try with "Background" (erases) or "Foreground" (brings back the pixels). Try different setting on the Border width and Ramp slider.

 

- Set the output to "Mask". That way you can adjust the mask with a brush after.

 

// Magnus

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took me about 20min and did it just 4fun because I saw this topic all the time

 

used the quick selection and smoothed the mask manually with a brush

 

the actual file is 25MB so here´s the jpg!

 

It looks really photoshopped (which has a sort of double negative meaning in this forum ;) ) but IMO not extremely bad. I guess the image has more a nice memory behind it rather than being the perfect shoot ;)

 

and yes - the blur is pretty cheap, sorry ;) 

 

 

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Hi, I found out how to download the pictures. ;)

 

The couple are very soft, so it was difficult to get the hair right. It would take to much time, sorry!

I added some brightness and contrast to them as well as adjusting the white balance (adjustment layers clipped to the couple).

 

I added gaussian blur to the background and cloned out the lamp post and the guy to the left (very roughly).

I cropped it too.

 

 

Krrrmt.. I nudged a little on their arms with the liquefier tool as requested.

 

MBd, I must have downloaded a different picture than you "My" man is much more blurred than yours.

post-14034-0-51388000-1446338214_thumb.jpg

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

MacBook Pro 16 GB
MacOS Sonoma 14.1.2

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When you hit save the browser opens the picture in a new tab, right?

You have to klick one into the hyperlink bar to highlight it and then press cmd + enter and then the file will be downloaded.

This also works for pdf.

Actually this works for every website but it's not particularly helpful in every case :D

 

So we've got the same images, I sharpened the couple a little bit, I think you've done a better job overall (y)

 

 

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