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Suggestions for best way to blend hair into modified background?


jay613

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I want to turn off the TV in the attached photo.   Blacking out most of the screen is easy but can anyone suggest the best way to blend the dog's hair into the newly black screen?  I've had mediocre results with Gaussian Blur and Smudge.    Liquify seems to have some promise but I can't figure out how to use it properly.   Perhaps it's a matter of using these tools in a certain way, or techniques for using them that will improve the results I get?   I know it's hard to do this perfectly.  Thanks for any tips.   Note, the attached is a very small version of the photo.  The actual photo I will be editing is much larger and you can make out individual hairs in front of the screen.  Like I said, I'm not looking for perfection, but the results I'm getting with these tools look really amateur. :(      Also, this is my first forum post so apologies if I've not interpreted all the rules correctly.   I shrunk my image and searched for an answer before posting.   Hopefully my head can remain attached to my body now.

niki1 small.jpg

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My suggestion:

 

Double the layer, black out the screen in the lower layer completely, regardeless of destroying dogs fur.

Cut out the upper left corner include the screen around dogs head so that the underlying layer become visible. Use the eraser for finetunig the cut on the fur and then use Smudging Plugin for some new strands of hair.

 

 

dog.jpg

Edited by IRON67
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Hi @jay613 and Welcome to the forum :D

 

Another way is:

 

1.  Make a new layer above the photo

2.  With the main color black, the same as the screen that you blacked out.

3.  With the brush size at #1 paint around the edge of the dog's hair.

4.  Gaussian blur at #1

 

ZkodBGS.png

 

30b8T8B.gif

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Thanks for three good suggestions.    I'm going to try them all.   You all demonstrated your results -- too bad I didn't upload the full res picture, I'd have three free consulting jobs!    Just kidding -- then I'd learn nothing.  

 

@Eli I did try the clone stamp, various ways, but always ended up with circular stamps clearly visible in the end result.   If not for that, it actually looked pretty good.   How do you avoid the appearance of circles from the stamper?    I'm not sure what you did in the third layer of your picture.   Are you stamping transparency or something?  

 

@IRON67 and @Pixie  I'm going to try your techniques.   They both look good.   I haven't worked with layers much, I will look at those tutorials first.  Thanks a lot.

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A method I've used is to use Zoom Blur, placing the zoom center so that the blurring is more or less in the direction the fur grows. Duplicate the image, select the region you want to soften, and apply a small blur to the lower layer. A similar approach is to use Red ochre's FurBlur. If you want to do the a full head or body, you'll need to do it in sections in order to get the added fur to grow in the correct direction.

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I'm trying combinations of the above.   FurBlur is nice.   Some erasing over a black layer, then some smudging, a little furblur, and then a very subtle bit of additional smudging ... holds some promise.   I just need a lot of practice and experimentation.

 

QUESTION:   You know how you can set transparency of an entire layer?   What I'd love is a "partial eraser" i.e. controllable transparency pen that only works inside the selected area.   Is there such a thing?     That would combine nicely with the magic wand to blend the black screen into the blue areas around the hair.   Then I could use FurBlur to paint hair back over the black/blue blended areas.

 

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To set the transparency of a layer, use the Layers menu. Make the layer the active layer, then click the Properties icon in the lower-right side of the menu (it looks like a stylus pointing at a tag). That will bring up a Properties menu, where you can set the layer's opacity.

 

To modify the pixel transparency in entire layer (or within a selection), you can use BoltBait's Transparency Adjustment and/or Red ochre's Alpha-threshold.

 

BoltBait's Feather and  dpy's AA's Assistant are useful for softening the edges of "objects," which are regions of non-transparent pixels surrounded by transparency.

 

(I'm not sure if you're using multiple layers to do the edit, but if you're not, you should be. It gives much better control. Also, FurBlur will draw fur into the transparent region, but won't draw "transparent fur" into the opaque region. That makes it advantageous to have the outside region transparent rather than a different color.)

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