Expert: Andre Hickman - 5/25/2006

Question
Iam a keen user of photoshop 7. I enjoying cutting an image of a person using the lasso tool and pasting it onto another image. However on doing so, the colour of the first and second image do not match, which clearly gives an impression that the new image is edited. How can I correct the colours using the appropriate tool? I usually go to image>apply image. Also when I cut the first image and paste it onto another, the edges do not match, which clearly gives an impression that the new image is a fake. How do I correct the edges?

Answer
Hey Fish,

LoL, I learn something new everyday! I have never used the "apply image" command.  I guess I have been working with this stuff for so long, that I didn't realize it was even there.  I know what you are asking, and I will answer to the best of my ability.  If you send me an e-mail address, I can send you some samples of photo manipulation that I have done, so you can see some examples.  

1) Color Correction - In my opinion, there is not some "mathmatical formula" to getting colors to match.  Your greatest tool in your use is actually not in photoshop...it is your OWN EYE!

When I paste into another image, the first thing I work with is the "brightness/contrast" and "hue/saturation." by tweaking these 2 things you can get your colors pretty close to the background image.  Then you may want to play with the "levels" settings, and tweak the RGB channels individually, etc.

Also take a look at the "healing brush" (the one that looks like a bandaid) and understand what it is capable of doing.

2) Matching - It took me a while to master this one, but al you really need to do is think about reality of the image that you are trying to produce.  First, the focus of both images may be different.  You don't want to put a crisp image of a person into an invironment that is slightly out of focus.  You may have to use a "gaussian blur" filter on one image or the other after you have superimposed them.  Also look at graininess...you may also need to add a little "noise" filter in their somewhere, if one of the pictures is a bit grainy.  

As for the edges, this is what I do...Cut it out and paste it into the new environment.  Now realize this (and zoom into some original pictures to verify) crisp edges aren't really all that crisp when you zoom into them.  They are usually blurred a few pixels.  When you cut things out, you probably have your feathering set to "0" You can either set the feathering for your lasso up a few pixels (2-5, depending on image size, really) or after you paste the image in, you can ctrl-click on the layer to select it, feather the selection a bit, invert the selection, then hit delete 1 or more times to get the desired transition between the images.

If you still have some areas of background attached to the image that you pasted, you may need to also utilize the "background eraser" tool, under the eraser tool menu.  With it, you can click on a color and basically paint that color away, wherever it is showing up in that layer.  This is especially great to use around wisps of hair, and fine edges like that.  instead of trying to cut around each hair strand, just cut out the general area, then use the background eraser tool.

3) Also keep in mind lighting angles of each picture.  It will never be believeable if you have bright light creating shadows high from the left in one image, and low from the right in the other.  Try to pick images or match up images with similar lighting, or at least believable lighting.  You may have to artificially add shadows, and you can do that by creating a new layer, and painting on black with an air brush, tweaking it, then changing the tranfer to multiply and adjusting the transparency.  

Trust me you will have to play will all these methods to get good at it, and get your desired effect, but once you develope the techniques using these tools, you'll be unstoppable. Send me an e-mail address, and I will send you some samples of what I mean. I'll show you the original images, and the resulting composites.

Oh, and one more trick that most people don't think about...If you are working with lo-res images, enlarge them 300-400% (using image>image size) before doing your manipulation, and then when you are finished, shrink them back down to their original size!  That way most of your "dirty work" is hidden through the size shifts, and you can get cut outs closer to perfect because the enlargement interpolates pixels, and you can cut closer, then when you shrink back down, everything kinda melts together flawlessly.

I hope this helps.  looking forward to your e-mail address!

Cheers,
Andre'