My daughter Brianna at easter

Any one have any advice on how to NOT make my photo's look like a

child cut them out with a blunt pair of sissors and elmer glued them into

the background? I know this looks horrible but I am stuck I am using

photoshop and am just now after 5 years of photography trying to

venture into unique things. I did create the digital background by myself

but I can't seem to figure out how to seamlessly add someone into it.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

1st - plan ahead. The biggest mistake you can make is trying to "extract" your subject from a complicated background. The extraction will cause complicated patterns and "cuts" like you see here.

 

2nd - Background. Choose your background carefully. A solid black or white may "salvage" a project ... Also, think about the distance and scale of your subject and the background ... to me, that is an issue here, the pretty girl is too big in relation to the background.

 

3rd - The halo. You did well not to leave a halo of color from the original background ... the most common "dead" giveaway.

 

Lastly - the hardest challenge, isolating your subject. Read alot and muck up a bunch of these playing with masks, extraction filters, erasers, and various selection techniques. It is time consuming and painful.

 

*** It isn't easy and frankly, not every photo is amenable to this technique ... there is a site called photoshop disasters that shows professional screw ups.

To make your subject a little less choppy, I would sit down and get acquainted with working with the pen tool on a path in photoshop. While its kind of hard to get the hang of at first, you can get in and really tweak your angles and curves. Also as you progress, definitely look into doing some selections with a channel mask. I agree with the previous poster, it takes a lot of practice, and it can be difficult, but it will come easier in time. If you ever want any pointers, email me and I'll try to help. We all gotta start somewhere!