How can I remove the blue slide?

[scott_eit]

I have been using Elements 4 for a week now. A friend has given me a 2 hr crash course, but you can imagine how little I know.

How can I remove the blue slide from this picture and still keep the hair detail? When I use the Magic Extractor.... the hair is majically extracted.

I am trying to remove the slide and clone the grass behind my daughter.

- Scott
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

[AngelicKim]

Hi Scott and Welcome. There was a similar thread yesterday, maybe it will help you. She needed to remove a trash can. Another option that you could do it select your daughter and put her on a new background. BTW, she is adorable. Nice shot.

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15448&highlight=garbage

[Shari]

Hi Scott. Welcome to the forum. I wish I could help you but I think you have picked a complicated subject to start. You can clone the slide out but you will also clone the hair. There are people that know a lot more than me that I am sure will offer some help. I know the smudge tools helps with a furry animal but... Another option is to select your very beautiful daughter and blur or fade the background behind her. Sometimes when I cannot do exactly what I want I will turn the photo into a sketch, fresco or poster filter and it looks great. Just wait a while and I am sure there will be lots of help and tips - that is what this friendly forum is known for. Let us see what you come up with please.
Shari

[AngelicKim]

Scott here is another thread that on page two has tips and links to help with selecting her hair.

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15369&page=2&highlight=jayman

[scott_eit]

Kim / Shari,

Thank you both VERY much!

-Scott

[nkeevers]

Scott, I used the magic extractor the other day on the below image (I'm still working on the picture so don't mind it's look), and it extracted some areas I wanted in, so I just painted them back in on the magic extractor screen.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/10ZDRTelJTLKPjB0Ux4nb4wwKK6yDY0_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=10ZDRTelJTLKPjB0Ux4nb4wwKK6yDY0)

[kimi_boo]

Welcome Scott!:) Great place you found here.
I am in Lafayette.

Very nice image of you daughter. It looks like a levels adjustment would bump it up a notch.
Duplicate your image. Control J. make the new one the active layer
Go to Enhance, Adjust Lighting, Levels. Move your right slider in a hair.
Now you can turn the eyeball off and on and see which one you like better.

[Diana]

Hi Scott. Welcome to the forum. I took a few minutes to work on your photo to see what I could do. If I had more time it would look better, but I wanted you to see it can be done.


http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1hG002Ihyh8M6pxlmII1Qiacg9aX5_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1hG002Ihyh8M6pxlmII1Qiacg9aX5)
I copied the photo to a new layer above the background photo.

Working on the copy1, I selected all of the girl and background except the part with the slide and base and didn't bother to select any of her wisps of hair, just went around where her hair was solid over the slide. Then I pressed Ctrl-J to place this selection on a layer by itself - copy2. Clicking off the eye on the original background layer and copy1 layer, shows a big hole where the slide used to be.

I then cut and pasted several samples of grass from other areas of the image which when pasted go on separate layers. Make sure these layers are below the layer with the hole. I used the move tool to move these grass cuttings around until they fill in a good part of the hole, then merged them together into one layer - grass. I then did some cloning on the grass layer to finish filling in the blank area where the slide was.

When it looked pretty good, I merged the copy2 layer and the grass layer.

I then created a blank layer above the merged copy2/grass layer. Working on this blank layer and using the smudge tool at 1 or 2 pixels, with Use all Layers in Options checked, I smudged out some wisps of hair, following the paths of the hair wisps on the layer beneath the blank layer I was working on.

I changed back and forth between the smudge tool and the brush tool (with a color selected from her hair) and changed back and forth between 1 and 2 pixels until I got a reasonable facsimile of her hair wisps created on the blank layer. I Ctrl-clicked to get a selection on the smudge layer and applied a gaussian blur. Then I merged the blank layer and the copy2/grass layer.

This technique takes practice. Working on blank layers is essential so if smudging hair wisps doesn't look good, you can just delete the layer and start over.

When I was done, did a levels adjustment (Ctrl-L) which brightened the image up some.

Diana

[kimi_boo]

Diana.... great job!!:D

[Diana]

Thank you Kim! I'm not an expert with it but I've had some practice doing this. It seems like so many of my good photos of people have lousy backgrounds. Maybe it's because I'm not really a photographer (just a wannabe).:D

I'll probably get my hands slapped for being off topic, but I just happened upon this website and have been laughing, so I thought I'd share it (not worth it's own thread):

An Arterial Bloggage (http://www.wendellwit.com/archives/category/admin/)

Diana

[Daviskw]

Great good job Diana

What a doll... a real heartbreaker!!!

I was working at the same time as you so I thought I’d post anyway but I could do no better. It is a tough one because the gray value of the hair and blue slide are so close… It makes any kind of extraction hard.

Tried a smudge as well just for fun. Didn't work too good...lol

Butch

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1YKF47QjMcNKEVijzp3ypEx90r0zG0_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1YKF47QjMcNKEVijzp3ypEx90r0zG0)
http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1GK8J7Oks5xquYBjhs5WjOOPvdDgd60_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1GK8J7Oks5xquYBjhs5WjOOPvdDgd60)

[Bayla]

Diana, Butch,

Your selections of the hair are both amazing! I had a go & found it almost impossible because the slide and the midtones in the hair were so very similar.

At the risk of being accused of advertising, I seem to remember there is a video in the subscriber section on selections....think it's a Dave Cross one and it was specifically about selecting hair. I remember at one stage he used threshold which changed everything into black & white & made for easier selection. Not sure if it would work in this case.

Bayla

[Cmcburnett]

Scott beautiful little girl. There is a video in the subscriber area on selection, I used the video to fine tune a selection, it works great, a bit time consuming though, but if you really want to work to correct a photo its worth watching. I've got to work on my attention deficit, the videos are great. Butch, you are so nice to repair pictures for us beginners, again you've done a great job. I have a feeling you are a pro at this.:)

[scott_eit]

WOW! You guys are INCREDIBLE.

Now I have to invite my friend back over to decipher what you wrote :)
Actually, I think I will be able to follow the mechanics of what you write but I see there is a talent hill I must climb too.

Merci beau coup!!!!!!

[Diana]

Great job, Butch.

Diana

[Dorrie H.]

I think these are the two video in the subsriber's area on selecting hair.

Using Selection Tools, Part 2
June 03, 2005
Using selections tools to make the perfect selection every time.



(http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/../subscriber/video_player.php?video=57) http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/../subscriber/images/selection_tools.jpg Using Selection Tools, Part 1
May 18, 2005

(http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/../subscriber/video_player.php?video=56)

[Cmcburnett]

Scott, a very good video can be found:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3375294950958238010
The web site has a video of different techniques you can use in elements.

[imageskill]

Try to use our product Background Remover
Background Remover home page (http://www.imageskill.com/backgroundremover/backgroundremover.html)

Download demo (http://www.imageskill.com/backgroundremover/BackgroundRemover_Demo_Setup.exe)

[Llist]

Great job Diana and Butch!! I haven't yet attempted to do anything like that yet.. don't think I'm quite up the learning hill that far yet but if I hadn't seen the original picture I wouldn't have known that it had been altered!!!

Dorrie
Thanks for the links to the videos... I'll have to tell my hubby to go build something so that I can watch them without him whining about me always being on the computer :) I used to complain all the time about him always being in the garage building something but now he can stay out there all he wants ;)

Thanks again guys

Laura