How to deal with small detail in cutout trees

[janisaufmanis]

Hey,

 

I am working on a personal project and I am trying to position my render jpeg into the photography image from the place.

 

The problem is, the background image is small and low quality (3552x2000), and there are unique trees that I feel like keeping, rather that replacing with other available cutout trees. I cut out the trees, tried creating a mask by using exposure settings and levels. Since the original jpeg is small, all the tiny branches and details are lost and I don't know how to deal with this. Please, any suggestions welcome.

Also, I don't feel confident about the correct blending options etc. because, tre trunks aren't placed and blended properly as well. I could improve that slightly, but what would be the smartest way to do this?

 

Please excuse the low quality of the image. I've attached the photo and the photoshoped image.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Working with low pixels images is a pain, and there is no magic solution really. That's why when I get a similar project and Always tell my client, that he/she needs to get high quality images or I can take the photos if I live close enough, otherwise they are warned the final output won't be perfect.

Having said that, you should look online for tutorial on photoshop how to deal with hair or creating mask, because there is many ways to cut out images and keeping the maximum of them, The last iterations of Photoshop has very good tools to help you with this.

For instance.

don't know this guy, never seen his tutorials, I just google some keyword about masking hair in Photoshop and this came up, pretty much what I do also.

best luck

[janisaufmanis]

Thanks, Francisco! The Tutorial will help, because I was using stone age methods comparing to that. However, I had been taught such method in school few years ago, but back then I was not paying attention, so here I am

 

I might have another question, but I will give it a try

Or maybe, if you have any advice right away, bring it on. So the branches and detail is also present on darker backgrounds of the image. So, how do I make a contrast over these areas in order to select the hair (or branches) in this case?In the attached photo the red color represents the problem are where I have to cut out the detail, but the background is dark.

 

Thanks.

[Francisco Penaloza]

well most selection tool are pixel base, so if you don't have enough color contras between your image and the background it will be very hard to make an automatic selection.

One way could be to duplicate your image and ajusting the RGB levels until you get enough contrast to make your selector to work.

other way could be using separated channels to do selections. like this tutorial.

 

http://www.bwvision.com/selections-part-2-channels/

At the end sometimes manual selection may be faster, just add a black selection layer and "paint "(with white) your selection manually.

[powerelizabeth]

Nice Stuff. You can check Photoshop train channel. I learn many thing on it

[Jesper Pedersen]

We do a quick test to remove the "gaps" in winter trees using the magic wand tool. If that doesnt work, we almost always opt to completely replace the crown of the tree (ie delete the existing and replace it with as similar as possible a hig res winter tree from our library (scaled and adjusted to match lighting/tone). This requires that you have a good library of high resolution photos of winter trees, which are carefully masked to remove the gaps (usually sky). This photoshop masking only needs to be done once and it might be worth keeping two versions (layers) with more/less feathering on the selection as for some scenes a light edge can be good (eg where the 3d model layer behind is also fairly bright).

 

Hope this helps ...and is not too obvious

 

Jesper Pedersen

http://www.pedersenfocus.ie

[dvdarchitecturerenderings]

After cutting out the trees with the "Wand" tool or "Color Selection" and improving the resulting mask with "Refine Mask" I often play with the highlights/shadows to bring the the white silhouette to the same brightness as the background. It`s kind of cheating, but you would be surprised how well it works.

 

Good Luck

-Damian

http://www.dvdarch.ch

[H A]

I've been using the "blend if" option in layer styles a lot recently. I copy the trees from the background layer on top of my visualisation and use the blend if grey option. By alt clicking the sliders you can separate them and set a smooth blending. Especially when the trees are as dark as on your example it works really nicely.

[H A]

I've been using the "blend if" option in layer styles a lot recently. I copy the trees from the background layer on top of my visualisation and use the blend if grey option. By alt clicking the sliders you can separate them and set a smooth blending. Especially when the trees are as dark as on your example it works really nicely.

 

And often I use a layer mask to edit the last small details on the top layer.

[Casey Hawley]

Old thread with new ideas!

 

The trees don't have to be perfectly masked from the background as long as the finished product looks good! Might consider using that one tree on far right that is closer to camera (more pixel data) to create a Photoshop Brush from the branches that are easier to separate from the sky. Then you can just carefully paint them back in.