Digital Diversity

So you have been out taking photos of your family, friends or even for a client. You get home and you have plenty of decent single portrait shots but not a single decent group shot. They are looking the wrong way or pulling faces, generally not giving you the picture you want.

Well you can always save the day by replacing the heads using some other shots you took that did come out well.

Using a combination of photographs that already match up, colour & light correcting, some clever masking and a bit of cloning you should be able to get a result your happy with.

For this tutorial it will help if you already understand the following.
• Layers and masks
• Adjustment layers and colour correction
• Cloning and healing

The images in this tutorial are the property of Blueberry Moon Photography. She was kind enough to let me use these shots for this tutorial. These in no way represent her high standard of work. You can view her excellent photography work here.

Using this technique you can go from this

To this

The idea here is to take the heads from decent portrait shots and blend them into the group shot in a realistic way. Before you start open, up all your images. If any of the portrait shots seem softer than the group shot you  will want to fix them by sharpening them up a bit.

Once all your images are of the same sharpness open up the group shot you need to correct.

Try and choose replacement shots where the heads angle will work with the way the body is facing. For example you wont want to use a head shot that is looking 90 degrees to the left and a body that is facing straight on. A small angle difference is fine though as we do often twist out heads in such a manor. Basically get angles that are realistic.

My first step here was to place the small boy in the middle onto the page on a new layer above the group shot picture. Then I resized it and put it in position.

In this portrait shot the boys head is in almost the exact same position, which is perfect. I Placed a mask on the layer and filled it in black so the new picture is totally hidden. Then with a soft (0% hardness) brush started to reveal the replacment face. If you look at the image below you will see I only revealed the face itself. I left the original hair, ears and even chin in place.

That was the easiest of the 3 to replace due to the perfect head angle and lighting on the face. Next up is the older boy on the left. As before I inserted the replacement head image, resized it and then re-angled it into place.

As before I added a mask to the replacement image. Then I used the mask to reveal the whole of the new head and a small amount of the shirt collar to help with the image blend. Because the head is at a very different angle I couldn’t use much of the original face. I did however leave the tuft of hair at the top. Looking at the image bellow you will notice that there is still some of the original head showing on the left side that needs to be hidden.

To do this I first created a new layer above the original image. Then using the clone tool I carefully went over the parts of the head showing until they where gone. I also did a small amount of cloning on the collar to blend it in.

The lighting on the replacement head is completely wrong so that now needs to be fixed. The first step to this was to add a levels adjustment layer above the replacement head layer. Then hold down alt and move the mouse between the head layer and the adjustment layer. The mouse arrow should turn into a linking symbol. Click and the adjustment layer should indent. This means it will only effect the head layer.

In the levels adjustment options window I made sure the drop down colour menu was on RGB. Then I moved the shadows and highlights sliders in till the lighting matched the original shot as best as possible.

Next I added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer above the levels layer. Again I linked it to only effect the new head image by holding alt and clicking between the Hue/Saturation adjustment and the levels adjustment layers. It will indent just like the levels adjustment layer.


In the Hue/Saturation adjustment options window I set the drop down colour menu to Master and increased the overall saturation a touch by setting it to +9.

Next I changed the drop down colour menu to Reds. Then I moved the Hue slider to the right very slightly (+6) to make the reds very slightly more yellow. Next I increased the saturation to +10.

2 down and 1 to go. I placed the replacement head for the girl into position and resized as needed.

Next I added a mask to the layer and filled it in black to hide the whole layer. Then using a soft white brush I started to reveal the replacement head. Notice how I left some of the original hair over the shoulders to help blend the image. Using a soft brush means the new hair fades seamlessly into the original.  However the lighting is again wrong when compared to the original group shot.

The first step I took was a Shadows/Highlights adjustment. There is no adjustment layer for this so I duplicated the new head layer in-case I made any mistakes. On the duplicate layer I applied the Shadows/Highlights adjustment (Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights). The settings I used were Shadows set to 13% and Highlights to 8%.

Next I added a levels adjustment layer and linked it to the girls new head (Hold Alt + click between the 2 layers). With the drop down colour menu set to RGB I brought the shadows and highlights sliders in to meet the ends of the histogram.

Next I set the drop down colour menu to Red and moved the shadows slider in a bit to reduce the excess red.

I then added a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer that was linked to the girls new head only. Here I increased the saturation a touch on the Master channel up to +5.

The final step in correcting the lighting was to increase the exposure on her face. This was done easily by simply duplicating the new girls head layer and then moving it to the top of the stack. Then I changed the blending mode to screen and its opacity to 25%.

The new group shot was now complete.

Tags: adjustment layers, advanced editing, advanced masks, colour correction, colours, contrast, elements, highlights, hue, layers, levels, lighting, masking, masks, photo editing, photography, photoshop, portrait, saturation, sharpening, thoughts, tutorial, tutorials

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 12:05 and is filed under photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.