folliage, trees, bushes, shrubs etc

[STRAT]

Hi lads'n'lasses

 

i've got a couple of photomontages comming up where the building is placed in a very sensative conservation area, and the planners want a pretty accurate and realistic couple of images from me.

 

this involves cutting and pasting in new 'green' elements, but also carefully moving and removing existing trees and bushes. now these trees and bushes are very prominent, big and complicated structures within the photos.

 

what's your best methods of removing trees from photographs?

 

in photoshop i usually use standard (or make my own) dirt or folliage/leaves type brushes as erasers, going round the edges elements to erase them out the best i can to make it look like they never existed there in the first place.

 

it's an easy enough job and i'm happy i'll get my desired results, but how do you do it?

 

what methods do you use for realistically cutting out trees and bushes from a photograph, specially if the backround behind the trees are a mish-mash of different colours making it hard to use the magic wand tool?

[vertexART]

Hey Strat,

your methods seem ok, and if U are having fun along the way too, even better

 

I usually do a rough outline of the tree or bush in question, then I examine it's color channels looking for the biggest contrast. Blue one usually creates it, so I separate it and make a new channel out of it. Then with some 'high pass' (sounds strange, I know) I get even more contrast, and outlines are more visible. Then it's all about proper tracing, and since I have tablet, that process is much easier and cleaner. I always use hard-edged brushes to avoid any future 'halos', and almost never use the wand.

 

hope it helps

cheers