Portrait help

[BobMoyer]

I have a photo of my two grandsons standing in a green pasture with a bright cloudless sky as the background. I have made a selection using the selection brush and used the refine option to clean it up. I cut/pasted it into a new document with a 'mottled' type of background (the type a professional photographer might use). The new background is darker and I have a very faint light outline around my selection.

Questions:

How do I eliminate this outline (if possible)?  Would the 'grow/shrink/feather' options work?  Would I shrink and then feather or vice-versa?

As far as making improvements to the photo (adjustment layers) should I do this before I make my selection-cut/paste, or after I pasted this selection into my 'portrait' background?

I have viewed so MANY tutorials and even purchased several courses at Udemy but my old brain can only retain so much information.

Thanks for any guidance.

Bob

[toltec]

 

11 hours ago, BobMoyer said:

I have a photo of my two grandsons standing in a green pasture with a bright cloudless sky as the background. I have made a selection using the selection brush and used the refine option to clean it up. I cut/pasted it into a new document with a 'mottled' type of background (the type a professional photographer might use). The new background is darker and I have a very faint light outline around my selection.

Questions:

How do I eliminate this outline (if possible)?  Would the 'grow/shrink/feather' options work?  Would I shrink and then feather or vice-versa?

As far as making improvements to the photo (adjustment layers) should I do this before I make my selection-cut/paste, or after I pasted this selection into my 'portrait' background?

I have viewed so MANY tutorials and even purchased several courses at Udemy but my old brain can only retain so much information.

Thanks for any guidance.

Bob

 

To be honest Bob, it is going to be next to impossible to give completely accurate guidance without seeing the image, mainly what you have done so far. However, as it is family I assume you would not want to post it, so I will describe a couple of things that will help using this Public Domain image. It is not very high resolution but it shows the effect. The young lady was on a white background and you can see that "reflected" on her shoulder.

 

To avoid every possible scenario and keep it fairly basic to start with, what I would suggest you try first is Refine the edges after making a selection, but to see what you are doing, change the Preview setting to Black Matte. That will be a huge help.

 

DO ANY ADJUSTMENTS AFTER GETTING THE SELECTION RIGHT !!!

 

Plan A.

 

Here is the original, with Preview set to Overlay.

.

 

Change the Preview to Black matte.

 

See how much easier it would be to see a light outline ?

 

Now, try changing the Refine panel settings, such as Border width and so on, to see it that gets rid of the issue.

 

Plan B. Next thing to try,  go back and after you make the initial selection, shrink the selection by one or two pixels. Enter - 1 or - 2 in the entry box

 

Select > Grow / Shrink

.

 

Then Refine again, using the same Black matte preview so you can see what you are doing.

 

 

Where you see the Adjustment Brush, (at the bottom of the Refine panel) you can use that to remove the white outline if it is not too much. Set a smallish brush size and select Background. If you paint around (outside) the selection edges, it removes from the selection. i.e. removes the outline. More useful if there is not too much.

 

You can also set this Adjustment Brush to Feather and paint around the edges where needed. That might help.

 

There are plenty of other methods but try these first. Play around with them and see how you do and let us know  Plenty of good people on this site willing and able to help you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BobMoyer]

Toltec, thank you very much for the advice.  After some trial and error on my part, your advice has given me the results I was hoping for.

Thanks again,

Bob