I was looking at some pictures that I had taken at the local Zoo to use in our green screen business and found one that I would like to redo for my desktop wallpaper. We would take pictures of guests in front of a green screen and then using software from Express Digital, would place them on a background of a zoo animal. The picture below is one as shot. I liked it for the green screen but not for my desktop wallpaper so I decided to redo the picture. I first selected the left side of the picture and did a cut and paste, moving the cut part closer to the male lion, trying to line up the two parts to look natural. I used the clone tool and the healing brush to work the two together. I merged the layers and cropped the image and then using the pen tool, I made a path around the mesh part of the photo as I wanted to remove it to make the picture look less zooy. I then madea section from the path and cut out that part, leaving a nice blank space. I found a picture of some tall grass, copied it and then pasted it four times as that was necessary to completely fill the void left by cutting out the mesh. I moved the grass layers to cover the blank spot, merged their layers and then used the healing brush to smooth the seams that were visible when the grasses were moved together. I placed the lions layer on top of the grass layer, did some more retouching using the eraser tool and the healing brush and then used the clone tool to get rid of the mesh at the right top of the picture. I merged the layers and then did a curves adjustment, merged the layers and changed to LAB mode. In that mode I did a levels adjustment on the "a" channel which brought out more of the red in the lions mane, changed back to RGB, resized the photo for my monitor (1680X1050) and came up with the second photo. The third photo is what we would do at the Zoo and the fourth photo is what the subject look like as shot in front of the green screen. That photo was not edited at all before it was placed on the lion background. The Express Digital software "knocked out" the green, sort of like using the magic wand tool in PS.
(all photos have been reduced for this web page)
PICTURE AS SHOT
PICTURE AS REDONE
SUBJECT PLACED ON BACKGROUND
(this is a different variation of the original picture)
PHOTO THAT WAS USED TO PLACE ON LION BACKGROUND
