Digital manipulation is often used to change the background in a photograph. I was asked to photograph the Michigan Ministerial Staff of the RLDS church for their web page. The day everyone was together was not suitable for taking pictures outside, so the picture was taken in a meeting room. I then needed to change the background for the final web page version.
RLDS Michigan Region Staff
The top picture of the two above is the initial photograph. I used the LASSO tool in Adobe Photoshop 4.0 LE to draw a tight circle around the group and cropped everything else out. Then I used the ERASER to eliminate the rest of the background. The result is shown in the lower image.
In Michigan's Upper Peninsula
Even the Limited Edition of Photoshop allows the use of a few layers. I opened an image of trees in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Using the trees as a background, I dropped the people picture on top of the trees as a separate layer. I moved the people around against the background and then I FLATTENED the image to combine them. I used the CLONE tool to eliminate flash glare from eyeglasses. The final result is the picture above. This is the picture that appears on their web page.
On The Las Vegas Strip
I finished this project at the same time that I returned from a trip to Nevada, so I thought I would drop this group of ministers right on "the strip." In this case, I did not remove the flash flare from the eyeglasses since a night shot would be taken with flash. The final result: a happy group of ministers on the Las Vegas strip! You can see this same scene with long streaming car lights (without the ministers) on my Las Vegas page.
Site Directory | Home PageAdded December 1, 1999
