Watch out.... Groundloop is learning photoshop

[groundloop]

I just signed up for the Photoshop/Lightroom subscription (I had been using Gimp and Canon's Digital Photo Pro - both free). Since I was already at least competent with Gimp my learning curve for Photoshop hasn't been too steep (though I'm nowhere near an expert, I still have to search for how-to tips for a lot of stuff). Anyway, I was playing around with a photo I took of a co-worker at Halloween last year.

Here's the original:

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And here it is after some Photoshop magic:

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[TexasTowelie]

1. Good job.

I need to learn more about altering between transparency and opaqueness when layering photos. It's neat that you were able to show the trees behind her fan and also the water between her right arm and hip.

[Solly Mack]

2. Neat!

I can't do that worth poo.

I need to keep trying.

[ohheckyeah]

3. Great job.

Why don't you do a tutorial video? You obviously know what you are doing.

[groundloop]

4. There's plenty of tutorials out there, that's where I learn everything

And honestly, I'm just scratching the surface of what can be done with Photoshop.

[ohheckyeah]

5. I know ...

I just thought maybe you would like to share how you did that particular photo. I've been using Photoshop for years and have used many tutorials over the years.

Nevermind.

[groundloop]

6. Here's a quick description of the steps

The background was selectively masked with the quick-selection and magic wand tool. What was left became a layer. I zoomed WAY in to selectively mask the background in the fan, again with the quick-selection and magic wand tool (I was surprised how fast that went).

Her head and neck were put on a separate layer, and her skin smoothed through a technique called frequency separation (I just learned about that a week or so ago, it's similar to the 'wavelet-decompose' plugin in Gimp).

I imported the outdoors photo and made that the bottom layer, then sized and positioned my co-worker's layers where I thought they looked the best.

Finally I did a little selective blurring of the background with the field-blur tool.

The really time-consuming part was zooming way way in and 'walking' around her outline to make sure there were no background pixels remaining from the original photo.

[ohheckyeah]

7. Thanks - interesting process.

Sometimes when I remove a foreground from a background I will paste the foreground on a color that will help me see and separate out any remaining pixels from the original background. Then I get rid of the color background.

Very nice job on this. I think there is always something more to learn in Photoshop.

I'm enjoying my subscription. I think it's so much better than having to shell out big bucks every couple of years for the newest PS and/or LR. I am liking Lightroom more than I thought I would.