Break down this wall, Mr Gediman!

[lesged]

When this man gave me permission to take his photograph, in my excitement I made a bundle of mistakes. It will be a challenge to correct so many boo-boos. I took 4 exposures. This one I considered the best of the lot. I've tried a tight crop, but feel the hands are too expressive to cut out. For me they telegraphs the tension behind his familiar smile and affable personality.

Background: I've seen this fellow for many years pushing shopping carts at  two local large stores. He often wears unusual hats: derby. top hat and  old-fashioned stiff, flat straw hat. I've tried to take shots of him through the years, but always on the sneak. Last week I stood next to him in the free coffee line at our favorite supermarket, where he used to work and screwed up enough courage to ask if I could take a picture of him. It was the first time I ever sopke with him. He agreed, wholeheartedly, and said, "maybe you'll make me famous." As we walked out I apologetically explained it would only be in black and white and not show off the colorful hat he constructed for Christmas as well as the digital that I usually have in the car. He sais," It might be better."

Why did I ask him to stand in front of the brick wall? Oh, why? It is too prominent and I don't know how to work with layers to minimize, eliminate or substitute a neutral background.  I could post another pose, taken from the same spot, with both hands completely in the photo's frame  But I thought this one has the best facial expression. Then again, maybe it's a candidate for the infamous tabloid use of PS. i.e., swapping heads with another frame with full hands. But if you feel tight crop is better, be my guest.

Have at it! Tear into it. I just would like to give him a decent photo for allowing me to take close up shots of him. He seems like a very intelligent, friendly, polite and charming person. Who knows what his past is all about. Could be a Phi Beta Kappa who can't find a better job or has already found a comfortable niche. Could be quite a story. There are legions of people who have gone that route.



Nikkormat FTn, 50/2 Nikkor, Arista II 400 (APX400) EI 320 Rodinal 1:25 5min 68F

[Tom Hildreth]

Les,
I'm working on a big covered bridge project right now, so I thought he might like to come along.

If your man approves, I'll post the bridge project here upon completion.

[lesged]

Thanks Tom! That was very neatly and expertly done. Now, just how do you mask/tease a person away from his background? I have PS 7 which includes most of  Elements ASFAIK

Being put into a bridge project, just might make that fellow famous. Who knows what odd coincidence may exist between him and your covered bridge?

OT: Tom, my response to your PM is still in my draft file gathering moss. Was away most of day, but will try hard to get it out by tonight. I have lots to say about your approaching retirement. I was about the same age as you when I pulled the rip-cord. It's been a long relatively smooth ride down so far. I'm into my 19th year of retirement, without a pension or any employer paid  health benefits. Luckily I have the VA for meds.

My copper handshake from GTE helped me to save and Claudia to invest and we get by on social security and enough to pay for BC/BS Medex Bronze and go to Florida winters. We are very frugal on all other matters, except for one of my occasional slips, when I have a GAS attack.

Never worked a day since Sept 1989. Come on into the retirement pool, the water's fine.

[Philip]

Somewhat less expertly done is this....  



Transported to the backwoods near St. John's... He's beginning to look a little like that guy with the hat at all the famous spots after Sept 11th...

By the way, Les, I did this without the use of layers.  I more or less carefully cloned him out of your picture into my own.  Then I got carried away coloring him.

[lesged]

Nice job, Philip!  So, how do you clone him out? I don't know how to cleanly follow an outline or select a dedicated, irregular, outline and "lift" it to another place. Or how to add it as an opaque form over to another image. Isn't that "layering?"

Im so saturated with hypo (never got to feel comfortable with those new- fangled words like "fixer") that many aspects of post-processing work flow is way beyond my ken.

But I'd like to think this old dog may not hunt anymore, but can learn a new trick or two. So throw me a bone and I'll sit up and beg.

TIA!

Les

[Philip]

Nice job, Philip!  So, how do you clone him out? I don't know how to cleanly follow an outline or select a dedicated, irregular, outline and "lift" it to another place. Or how to add it as an opaque form over to another image. Isn't that "layering?"

Les, thanks. There _are_ several ways to clone and most people recommend doing it with layers. But, to be honest, I'm too lazy to do my cloning with layers -- I just save multiple copies of the image, changing their filenames with a, b, c, etc.  I used Paint Shop Pro here -- I used to use an early version of Photoshop in the late 1990s and early 2000s but hated it.  A friend suggested Paint Shop Pro and I've been using it for about four years;  it is much more suitable to my personality and needs (which are not professional or commercial).

How I did it:  I opened the original wet road picture and opened your picture next to it.  I resized your picture until it was approximately the right proportion for fitting into mine. Your man is actually somewhat small as I copied him, but I kinda like the strange proportion/perspective that brings.  To clone him, I first set my clone tool starting point at his lowest left edge (in PSP that's done by right clicking over the spot). Then, switching to my own picture, I found a spot on the lower edge where I wanted his left edge to start from.  Left-clicking to bring him in (with my tool size fairly large and with its "opacity" set at 100%) I fairly roughly but completely brought him into my picture.  [Then I saved my modified picture with a new file name.] I opened another copy of my original picture to use that for repairing the corona of brick wall around your man. Setting my cloning tool at a much smaller size (about 10 pixels and then even smaller a second time through), I cloned back into the background around him the bits of original ground and trees that were lost when I so roughly cloned him in to begin with. [Following me?]  

When he seemed fully cleaned up in that regard, I tried softening some bits, to reduce the jarring effect of two photographs coming together with very different scanning qualities (yours was scanned at much higher quality than mine).  Then I decided to change my very white sky a bit, simply dropping in some light blue, which I later graded in Picasa from dark at the top to light near the trees.  

That got me started on colorizing it (in PSP again), and I was off . . .

.

[Tom Hildreth]

Les,
Oh, you expect me to remember how I did that? I really should take notes when I do these things.
I can't recall all the details but it goes like this: First, my hands started to shake and my fingers jabbed the keyboard until I had Photoshop 7 up. I opened your image and then the phone rang. I came back to the computer a while later and my hands started to shake again and for no particular reason I exclaimed, "EXTRACT, yes, that's it! I'll extract this fellow! I had never used extract before, but my eyes rolled back in my head and the mouse jiggled around nervously until little white and grey squares had replaced everything but your friend. Then someone came by and wanted my help on an issue. An hour later I came back to the computer and said, "where the He** was I? Oh yeah, Les' picture. Ahh, there it is hidden under a few other screens. I sort of remembered I had isolated the guy from the brick wall, so I looked around for one of my images into which I could, ahh. slide him. Or copy him. Or unexctract him. Then the phone rang.
 
OK, now it's after lunch and I'm feeling good because a few of us went out to do a little walk around the area and tried to convince each other this compensated for our bad diets. Nevertheless, (or in your case, always the Les), I came back in and sat down at the computer and...the phone rang.
 
I can remember briefly thinking..."something about a photo...." But first, I went upstairs to get a cup of coffee and no sooner did I feel the caffein kick in and "pop", there he was standing in front of the covered bridge. It's possible the hand shaking and eyes rolling this occurred at this point, but the excitement of artistic discovery had caused me to forget all the details-if it did happen, that is. See, it's all a very precise process here.
 
Maybe if I had tried this at home the story would not be as disjointed. Ahh, no. That process is subject to domesticatis interruptis, and quite possibly recall would be even scantier. Go with this one, Les.

[lesged]

Thanks Philip I followed most of what you wrote. My son gave me Paint Shop Pro 6.02, which he prefers over PS, and way back, so did Craig, IIRC. I also have Picasa, but use it for organizing pics, not for work flow.

I have lust installed PSP 6.02. and have my Epson Perfection 4180 Photo scanner as its Twain source. I have opened up in PSP my original TIF file of "Man with funny hat," using my Epson Scan. (that's the procedure I've been using the past year or two with PS 7)

What I don't understand is what is supposed to happen after I touch the lower left bottom point of my "funny-hat man"  with brick background using the PSP cloning tool. Perhaps it's better to continue the detail steps via PM or email. Then again, others may be  interested in the technique you used.

I presume I'm to locate the appropriate target area for transplanting my man onto a new background, after equalizing proportions of two different images with trial copies of my man as a template to check how he'd look against the details of that specific magnification of the target background. When satified the fit is right, touch it where I want the lower left corner of my guy to be, and he will miraculously appears there by a click of the mouse. Correct?
But what is a mystery to me is how does the cloning tool know what the outline of my man is? How does it discern his intricate outline from the brick wall?

I'll stop my questions here and give you and/or others a chance to respond. As ever, I appreciate all tips, suggestions and examples from each person that has responded.

Les.

[martolod]

Nice job, Philip!  So, how do you clone him out? I don't know how to cleanly follow an outline or select a dedicated, irregular, outline and "lift" it to another place. Or how to add it as an opaque form over to another image. Isn't that "layering?"

cloning is one way
another tool you can use is the 'Lasso' tool.
in particular 'Magnetic Lasso'
it will create a line around high contrast areas as you move your mouse around the are you want to cut out. around the lower contrast areas you find it's a little erratic and you have to clock the mouse button a lot more to create enclosure points.once the section you want is fully enclosed it's just a matter of cut/copy and paste. if you any areas to clean up ie a little extra background then the eraser tool is handy
use the online help file of you photo application to see how the Lasso tool works in detail

[Philip]

When satified the fit is right, touch it where I want the lower left corner of my guy to be, and he will miraculously appears there by a click of the mouse. Correct?
But what is a mystery to me is how does the cloning tool know what the outline of my man is? How does it discern his intricate outline from the brick wall?

Ahh, no, PSP doesn't know these things.  The way I do it (though there may be more automatic ways) is very manual.  Your right click on the source picture establishes where PSP will take bits of image from.  In your destination picture (there must be a better term than that!), your left click establishes where PSP will start laying down that picture.  It lays it down as you move your mouse around with left-click engaged.  How much it lays down as you move along depends on the size of your clone tool, a size you can change as you go along. I don't know PSP 6.x but, in PSP 9 and 10, this size change done in a small box that appears on the screen when you enable the cloning tool.  There are some other variations you can make too -- I mentioned the "opacity" and you can vary others like "density" and shape.

You (rather than PSP) have to discern the shape of what you take, but don't let your rough technique worry you. I doubt it's rougher than mine.  I simply correct what I've done by opening another copy of the "destination picture" and, using a closer zoom and a smaller cloning tool, I bring image back in the areas I accidentally took out before.  (The only tricky part about doing that is establishing your point to start, but once you try that a couple of times you'll get the gist of it.)  I wish I could show you this in person because it is actually very clear and easy once it is seen -- but explaining it at a distance seems rather opaque.

I suspect that PSP will more automatically, more than by my method, pick up whole objects (like your man) with something involving the smart selection tools. But I've never tried to figure that out.

Good luck!

.

[head zoo keeper]

Wow, cool! I gotta try that layers/clone trick. I literally hand-paint using the masking tool in Photoshop on the areas I want to drop out. It takes patience but I guess the one advantage is fine-point opacity control around feathery edges like hair where the edges aren't hard but soft.

[Major Black]

My Muse is also a pro graphic designer. She uses the pen tool and sets clipping points all along the outline of the subject. It's labor intensive and a trick to get used to the fulcrum like swinging points but far more detailed and accurate than the lasso tools if you need something done very accurately.

[Tom Hildreth]

This verifies my suspicions that there is no easy or "automatic" way to do this. Drat, I thought if I found an advanced Photoshop course in these parts the magic would be explained.
 
My technique has been similar to the above. Sometimes I'll enlarge the image till I can see idividual pixels while using the tool of my choice. It's sort of a visual deception, in that you can enlarge the image to the equivalent of working with a brush under a strong magnifying glass. The viewers will not have the magnifier, and with the Mark I eyeball will never know the mischief you have been engaged in at the pixel level.

[rippo]

i guess i didn't like his hat.

[lesged]

Amazing! Every brick looks just right.  Thanks for fixing it. I'll show it him when I get back home. He'll never recognize himself. I can hear his reaction now:

"Look Fred no head!" "When I squeeze my hands together hard, it disappears."

Les