More PSE7 Collages for Comments/Suggestions

[George Tyndall]

Your comments have been very helpful.

Please keep them coming.

Yellow Dress Lily Pond_edited-1 (Medium).jpg

Young Woman in the Countryside_edited-2 (Medium).jpg

Woman in Yellow Wades in Stream_edited-1 (Medium).jpg

Young Woman by Stream_edited-1 (Medium).jpg

Young Woman at Lakeside_edited-1 (Medium).jpg

Young Female Narcissus_edited-1 (Large).jpg

Young Woman in Garden no SJP (Medium).jpg

Young Woman Frolics in Japanese Garden_edited-2 (Medium).jpg

Note: All scenic backgrounds downloaded, free, from morguefile.com (thanks again for that link, Bob).

[Steve Grisetti]

You're certainly getting better and better, George!

But I keep seeing the same issues. Your model never looks blended in with the rest of the picture. She always looks very obviously pasted on. There are four things you should watch out for:
1) Make sure she's of the right relative size. Particularly the picture in the Japanese garden, she looks way too large for the rest of scenery.
2) Make sure she's of the same resolution. Before you paste one picture into the other, set them to the same size and resolution. That way she won't look like a much higher resolution than the background.
3) Make sure she's of the same color temperature. Once you've pasted her onto your background, you can adjust either the Saturation/Hue/Lightness or the Set Skin Tone effects. She looks to be lit by indoor, slightly red lights while your background is lit with sunlight, which tends to be bit bluer.
4) Finally, smooth the edges around her a bit. You can select the area around her and use Selection/Refine edge to create some slight feathering. Right now her edges are so harsh that she looks very obviously pasted onto the background.

Have you had a chance to check out my three-part tutorial on doing this kind of work yet? I show you how to use most of these techniques to blend pasted images into new backgrounds.

[George Tyndall]

You're certainly getting better and better, George!

But I keep seeing the same issues. Your model never looks blended in with the rest of the picture. She always looks very obviously pasted on. There are four things you should watch out for:
1) Make sure she's of the right relative size. Particularly the picture in the Japanese garden, she looks way too large for the rest of scenery.

Yes, that's always the most difficult decision.

2) Make sure she's of the same resolution. Before you paste one picture into the other, set them to the same size and resolution. That way she won't look like a much higher resolution than the background.

I've already done that for all the images.

3) Make sure she's of the same color temperature. Once you've pasted her onto your background, you can adjust either the Saturation/Hue/Lightness or the Set Skin Tone effects. She looks to be lit by indoor, slightly red lights while your background is lit with sunlight, which tends to be bit bluer.

Hmmm. My goal is to simulate Peter Gowland-style flash-filled photos, which do cause the model to stand stand out from the background, but I will redo the above following your suggestion.

4) Finally, smooth the edges around her a bit. You can select the area around her and use Selection/Refine edge to create some slight feathering. Right now her edges are so harsh that she looks very obviously pasted onto the background.

I've been using the Refine Edge dialog for all the images, however, with the red mask it usually appears that the images look better with minimal to no smoothing and feathering. As I've saved all the selections, I'll redo the above with either more feathering or using the blur tool and then re-post for your opinion.

Have you had a chance to check out my three-part tutorial on doing this kind of work yet? I show you how to use most of these techniques to blend pasted images into new backgrounds.

Yes, and as I wrote previously, they are very helpful, especially the third one regarding creation of shadows. Thanks for taking the time to post your comments, Steve.

[George Tyndall]

Steve, the feathering on this is 43px!

I used a green filter to make the skin and clothing of the model reflect the light emanating from the surrounding greenery.

Bob, your masks make it so very easy to drop the model behind the side of the bridge, so that just a smidgen of the top of her boots is showing.

in advance for any additional suggestions.

Young Woman on Bridge no SJP_edited-1 (Large).jpg

[George Tyndall]

Here is yet another for the perusal of the experts:

Young Woman in Library_edited-1 (Large).jpg