Photoshop Help - Adding Person to a Group Photo

[mallik]

Hi, I am using CS3 and I want to add a person to a group photo. I know a little bit about how to do it but to make it more complicated I wanted to put the person in one of the middle rows instead of just adding them to the background.

If anybody could help in the best way to go about doing this or point me to a good tutorial, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Billb2]

I think we'd have to see the pics.
At least I would.......

 

[rudder]

First off do you know how to isolate objects from the background? You can download a free trial of vertus fluid mask which makes the task take about 10 times less time that doing it manually.

You need to make a second layer. Then you isolate the people who will be in front of the added person and this will be the first layer.

Then you add the person to the second layer.

Then that new picture with the added person will be layered underneath the isolated people who will be in front.

Hard to explain without an example.

 

[rivan]

Rudder's right on with the steps.

Image A = person/people you want to add
Image B = group to be added to

1) Open A, double click 'background' in layers palette to make it a layer
2) Add layer mask to 'layer 1', use paint brush/select&fill/magic wand/select color range/whatever to mask everything but your person
3) Open B, copy 'layer 1' from Image A to Image B (right click on the layer and select "Duplicate...")
4) scale/position layer 1 to the appropriate position
5) continue masking layer 1 wherever your subject should be "behind" things in the group image

Step 2 can be very challenging depending on the subject. Hair is typically especially difficult. There are many products that can get you good starts on masks (like Vertus that rudder mentions) but I've never seen any product do a perfect job.

If the backgrounds permit, sometimes you can bring more than just the person - some sky, perhaps, then feather the sky or whatever into your destination sky.

Those steps don't include things like color correction if the lighting or environment aren't similar from A to B. If your subject is, say, in a library in between stacks and your destination is a sunny soccer game, you can expect to have somewhere between a near-impossible and impossible time getting the "transplant" to look totally natural.

 

[mallik]

Thanks for the help guys. I have been messing around with it over the past few days and due to my inexperience I think Fluid Mask works well.

I don't know if I am doing this properly but I made a duplicate layer and then isolated the first row using Fluid Mask. So the first layer has the first row of people and the second layer has everybody.

How would I make the second layer have everybody except the first row so that I could add the person to the second layer and then put the first layer on top?

 

[rivan]

I'm not sure I understand where you are in the process. Can you post or email some images?