As a consequence of illness, 2 close family members were unable to attend a recent wedding and asked if I knew if it was possible to "add them" into a couple of the family shots.

 

I'm aware of Photoshop, but have limited to no experience with manipulating photos, beyond cropping etc with the default Windows tools.

 

I've looked at various guides on Youtube etc, but wondered if anyone on here could provide me with practical guidance?

 

I'd suggested they might be best served by taking photos of themselves (in their wedding garb) against a plain background, as this might make it easier to isolate them?? Not too sure on the technicalities, so any / all advice gratefully received.

 

 

If you want it to look 'real' then you'll want to get photos of them in the right clothes and match the focal length, lighting, and angle to that of the photograph you want to edit them into. Then it's just a case of masking round them in the donor photo and pasting them into the correct part of the new one. Masking where appropriate there as well.

 

The Photoshop work is very basic and shouldn't take a skilled artist long at all, someone new to it may take a bit longer, but it's not rocket science. The two hurdles you'll hit are:

• Matching the donor photograph to the original (if lighting, angle or focal length are off then your head will 'see' the problem in the final even if you're not sure what's wrong). If you're a camera-ey person then grain (ISO), focus, DoF etc. are all worth taking into account here.
• Hair. Hair is a ***** to mask out. Especially women's. and/or semi-transparent hats - make sure no one decides to wear a fascinator if you're gonna do the masking.

Both can be overcome (somewhat) with decent Photoshop skills, but at the expense of time and a lot of headaches. I often find I have to reduce the quality of the original/overall photograph due to the problems with the donor that I have to match. Which is never a nice position to be in when you have a nice photo on your hands to start with.

 

Masking is a basic skill in Photoshop but there's literally 100s of methods to do it and some techniques fit certain situations better than others so it'll be hard to explain how exactly as it will depend on how your photograph(s) are. But, as you've said, there's plenty of tutorials on masking out there: Remove the background from the person in the donor photo. Paste that into the original. Resize and fit them in place. Mask out any foreground items that should be infront of the new people. Bob's your uncle.

If you want it to look 'real' then you'll want to get photos of them in the right clothes and match the focal length, lighting, and angle to that of the photograph you want to edit them into. Then it's just a case of masking round them in the donor photo and pasting them into the correct part of the new one. Masking where appropriate there as well.

 

The Photoshop work is very basic and shouldn't take a skilled artist long at all, someone new to it may take a bit longer, but it's not rocket science. The two hurdles you'll hit are:

• Matching the donor photograph to the original (if lighting, angle or focal length are off then your head will 'see' the problem in the final even if you're not sure what's wrong). If you're a camera-ey person then grain (ISO), focus, DoF etc. are all worth taking into account here.
• Hair. Hair is a ***** to mask out. Especially women's. and/or semi-transparent hats - make sure no one decides to wear a fascinator if you're gonna do the masking.

Both can be overcome (somewhat) with decent Photoshop skills, but at the expense of time and a lot of headaches. I often find I have to reduce the quality of the original/overall photograph due to the problems with the donor that I have to match. Which is never a nice position to be in when you have a nice photo on your hands to start with.

 

Masking is a basic skill in Photoshop but there's literally 100s of methods to do it and some techniques fit certain situations better than others so it'll be hard to explain how exactly as it will depend on how your photograph(s) are. But, as you've said, there's plenty of tutorials on masking out there: Remove the background from the person in the donor photo. Paste that into the original. Resize and fit them in place. Mask out any foreground items that should be infront of the new people. Bob's your uncle.

Many thanks - I'll give it a go. Will be using the same camera with a 22mm pancake lens, so focal length shouldn't be a problem.