Chitty Chitty - background replacement

[Eunosdriver]

Hands up, I took this on my compact a while ago, but I'd like to hear people's thoughts on how I've done with the background replacement. I'm quite pleased, but does it pass muster to those with more discerning eyes than mine ? I'm not 100% sure about the trees, despite a lot of work fixing the edges.

Before;

After;

[krpolak]

I cannot see any serious mistake, looks good. Maybe stuff behind car glass could pop up. Also remember, that you present small image and as always devil sits in details

Regards,

K.Polak

[PiroStitch]

Looks like you went to some great pains to remove that background Great stuff. To be picky, I'm sure about those trees either in the bkg. The leaves seem to be too straight...if you get what I mean.

[sirhc55]

Pete - nice bit of retouching there and Piro - trees are not so bent in England as they are here

[bloop]

That looks great. Can't tell the background has been replaced, well at this size anyway. Good job

[cc@t]

Looks damn good to me - as a fairly new user to PS could you put the steps down how you did this ??

[Eunosdriver]

Looks damn good to me - as a fairly new user to PS could you put the steps down how you did this ??

No problem; biggest issue was time spent making the initial selection.

1 - Double click on background layer in layer pallette to re-name and unlock it
2 - select carefully round Chitty & daft bloke who owns her; mix of magic wand (with various tolerance settings), quick mask and lasso tool. Include the view through the end of the windscreen
3 - Inverse selection, and feather by 1 pixel
4 - Cut the messy background
5 - Clean any odd looking edges remaining
6 - Find a suitable replacement background. Mine came from a trip to the zoo. Clone out Zebra, extra tree, people and sign on the barn (note to self, next time, pick a better background!)
7 - Flip the background (looks closer to the original grass that way - again, not nesessary with a better matching background!)
8 - Move background up a bit so treeline is in the right place
9 - Decide sky on replacment background is too pale, make ridiculously complex and time consuming selection round the trees to remove it, replace with PS rendered clouds (with perspective distorted to look 3D)
10 - Select area behind end of windscreen, desaturate slightly, weak brightness and contrast to match the rest of the view through the screen
11 - Small tweak in levels
12 - Sharpen
13 - Move on to 2nd glass of red

I definitely need to go out and take some 'stock' photos of empty fields, rooms, walls etc if I'm going to do too many more of these. It'd have been much easier with a better background!

[cc@t]

Pete - thanks for that...Holy shit what a mammoth task!!! I think I will have to wait a while to try that....

[christiand]

Hi Pete,

thanks very much for the information.
You've done very well.

Regards,
Christian