I love the way the light falls onto this statue of a pig (taken in Bath) - however I want to remove the background and create a kind of shadow effect like that that is around the pig! Any ideas as I'm a bit stuck.

Thanks in advance
Jules
x

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My Gallery Please comment and leave suggestions, I'm learning and would like all the help you can give me. Thanks

    Good afternoon Jules

Me no expert,maybe you could have a play about with the Spot Healing brush,and try to "bleed" the shades you want into the areas you want them,see the Guitar pic in my Gallery,thats how i did that.Just Alt Click on the area you want to bleed from,then brush it into the required place,might just get you thinking and cause you to find something else.

bill stewardson

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"the best photographer in the world 12/13 May 07" bigbilly

Big Bill's Gallery

myspace.com/billstewardson
photobilly.co.uk

Not really sure what you mean about the shadows. Removing the b/g is pretty trivial.



I just dropped a bullseye gradient on it but you could really paint in whatever you want.

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Check out my Soup - pretty cool for one of the best
wedding photographers in the UK.

If you want the background darker you could also use the Burn tool (presuming you are in Photoshop).

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TBPITW 29-30 Mar 2008 and 9-10 Aug 2008

DCM Gallery

    Hello from Breezey Sheffy.

Errrmm,,,,think JRs effort wins the day.
Thing with PS is,,,theres prolly 893 different ways to do everything,just gotta keep trying them till you find one your comfy with.

bill stewardson

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"the best photographer in the world 12/13 May 07" bigbilly

Big Bill's Gallery

myspace.com/billstewardson
photobilly.co.uk

If this is what you mean, I drew round the pig and the base carefully with the polyganol lasso tool, went to Select and Inverse, then Image, Adjusments Brightness and Contrast and took out the brightness completely, and adjusted the contrast to how I wanted it to look.  When I use the polyganol tool I always set the Feather at 4 px.

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[Digital Black and white]

Nice job Keith.

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Paul
My glass is 4/3rds full :)

MY GALLERY

My DCM Gallery

My only complaint with your method Keith, is that I feel it's too sudden, and thus doing it by burning leads to a more natural and gradual shadow.

 

 

But then we dont know what the op wanted :p

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The problem with burning in is that on enlarging (or especially printing) the image the background can sometimes look patchy.  Burning, or dodging is not, in my humble opinion, the best way to deal with large areas of deep shadow or light. But each to his own of course.  What ever way suits best.  I turned down the brightness fully, but you can turn it down gradually to achieve a softer grad between shadow and light.  I have used this technique for many art brochure shots in the past with great success. (see example below)

Click on image to see larger version.

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[Digital Black and white]