how to enlarge background in studio photoshoot

[Yumeropes]

Hello !!! i already tried much tips in affinity tutorials to enlarge backgrounds in studio photoshoot....

 

my main concern is that i often have to take 2:3 pictures (my captor ratio) and turn em in 4:5 for socials like instagram...

most of the time the background is kinda neutral, color, white black, but with light effect, not only solid.

I saw the good tip that you select each "side" cmd+j , V then you just enlarge the side and everything is fine, ok so if you dont do it to much, thats quite good, 

but in some situations, you also need to "complete" a little bit, not just strech.
inpainting work randomly, sometimes perfectly fine, sometimes, you dont get what is the problem.
the patch tool can be ok but even if i think to rasterize, border of patch get blured, or even sometimes transparent...

paintMixerBrush is often a quite good option for me in photoshop, adding noise then, but.... here in affinity, it cant work on "active and under" but only on active one, thats a problem, and more : sometime, with same setting, it work, sometime not, most of the time it work REALLY TOO MUCH, and sometimes really not enough : for exemple with flow set to 13 its already too much for me, but like 12 dont work enough at all...

so i dont know if i just have problems with every feature or... if any tip can be relevant  

 

thank you everyone

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Yumeropes

The best solution in situations like this will often be different for different images so we need to be able to see what you can see in order to advise on what the possibilities could be.

If you can show us an example image, and tell us which areas of the image you want to ‘extend/enlarge’, and tell us what you expect the result to look like, we should be able to give you some ideas.

[Yumeropes]

well well... il try to be as clear as possible with this exemple, maybe not the most relevant but... it still can explain things....

Typically the kind of things i need to handle, here is a simple one because the backgroud doesnt take to much different things like gradient shadow.... anyway

my concern is that most of my pictures are unfortunately on a way too much little background (things gonna change, but money is needed, wating this, just spending way too much time.... thats life)

 

most of the time i gonna need a 4:5 ratio for export, so i have 2 option : most of the time i just crop on it (much more easy) but sometimes i had to expand the picture

 

let's try to the right side the first option INPAINTING :

as you can see, here we have some artefact, the color dont match, the light neither, thats really bad, i had same kind of issue in photoshop BUT i can handle it with layers in color, mode, curve and selector, but things who doesnt exist on affinity (i made another post to know more about it) 

 

so here, i can try patch tool to "kind of unifying things"thats a little bit better but using a check layer we can see in a better way what kind ot things i dont want to keep

i used to solve those things with another layer, and the paintmixerbrush with few opacity, little bit noise, to mix it, and verything is fine but here

when i use the paintmixerbrush witht like 100 flow and 55 strenght its dirty (but thats normal)

so i go flow down

even 51%flow the result is really way too strong and dirty, just made a line to show but im used to work with very subtiles things....

so i go down JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE for 50%but here NOTHING happend, it does'nt work anymore, except if i make strenght up, like 70% and its as dirty as with 53%flow 55 strenght, ... so i cant understand why this tool dont work at all like photoshop one, and here, it seems to work more like the finger tool... thats a clue....

 

then my other concern is if i try for the left side just to expand , duplicating a little bit of the background and stretching itits almost "ok" exctept that "it stretches out things" 

so i cant keep the same texture

we can see that the stretched left part dont have the same texture, here again with photoshop i can handler with paintmixerbrush, noise, opacity, and make the deal....

my main question is that "how can i just do a clean work quite fast" 
because to compare times for one picture, with photoshop : expending cleaning background take me like 3min, cleaning retouching D&B when needed on subject like 6-10min, 

in affinity : expending cleaning background : 13-15min, cleaning retouching D&B when needed on subject : 25-30 min 

 

i know that "when thats a new software you are not as fast in the beginning" but the truth is that i started by affinity, but to learn, affinity doesnt had enough tutorials and online course so i learned photoshop, and everytime i go back to affinity, i prefer so much things.... but all my "ordinary job" takes eternity XD

Im pretty sure that some people have to do this, and can handle this, without spending a whole life on everything so.... i'm just looking for "the thing" i missed ^^ 

[GarryP]

Thanks for the screenshots and extra information but we would preferably need the image itself so we can experiment with it to find a good solution for that particular image.

[carl123]

Why not just cut the main image out of the background then use any background (colour/image) you want

 

[Yumeropes]

33 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Thanks for the screenshots and extra information but we would preferably need the image itself so we can experiment with it to find a good solution for that particular image.

Thank you but my purpose is so "general" that i just hope anyone already met this problem and know how to solve it.... :3 don't worry !!

15 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Why not just cut the main image out of the background then use any background (colour/image) you want

 

well... thank you to propose this, but thats not an option because its not what i wanna do (because i dont like it, because its more difficult to keep the decided shadow on the wall, because its more difficult to have like this the result i wanna have.... and because for most of the pictures i have, "cut out" is really too much time consuming, they are not all as easy as this one^^"

 

so thats not my option.... thanks ^^ 

[thomaso]

I'd just stretch copies of the masked outer areas (+ blur/noise if wanted).

[GripsholmLion]

Stretching is definitely the easiest way to fix things like this, but does it really need the masking? I've sometimes needed to do it with desktop light box shots and I just duplicated a rectangular selection and stretched it.

[Yumeropes]

6 hours ago, thomaso said:

I'd just stretch copies of the masked outer areas (+ blur/noise if wanted).

 

2 hours ago, GripsholmLion said:

Stretching is definitely the easiest way to fix things like this, but does it really need the masking? I've sometimes needed to do it with desktop light box shots and I just duplicated a rectangular selection and stretched it.

well thank you both for your lights, i can understand your point so : i gonna go as soon as possible in a photoshoot i have to edit, and i'll come back to you with a real problematic picture, what i tried, what failed, what i finally get, maybe gonna be more relevant^^ (you are not ready, gonna be hard ! ) thank you for all your support ! 

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, GripsholmLion said:

does it really need the masking?

No, it's simply a habit to avoid pixel layers and instead prefer a non-destructible workflow with linked image layers. This also allows the edges of the stretched copy to be blurred with the masking vector object (of any shape).