Change Background...

PaulieC

Hi photoshop wizards,

Caould someone tell me, in steps, how I would go about changing the background in this pic to white? The backgroound is currently a bit noisy, so I would either like to reduce the noise on the background or change to white.

Thanks

irishcrazyhorse

well firstly i wouldnt change it 2 white as the girls t-shirt will just blend in,try some smudgeing and burning!well thats what i would do anyway

5uspect

mmm, there are a number of ways of achieving that effect. I like to go the non destructive editing route of duplicating layers and using layer masks.
I've attached a PSD file (I've renamed the extension to .txt to avoid the file size limit on PSDs, just rename the extension back to .psd)

Layer 1 is just your image...
Layer 2 (hide layer 3 for now) is a levels adjustment layer with the original image used as a layer mask with the little girl blacked out (this makes the adjustment layer ignore the corresponding pixels in the image in layer 1 itself)
If you double click on the adjustment layer icon in layer 2 you get a levels dialoge box. Fiddle with the sliders to mess with the background.
Layer 3 (hide layer 2 now) is a plain white layer with a layer mask made from the image by making the girl all black and the background all white. This means anything you do to layer 3 is only applied to the background, so you could paste in a seaside or what not into layer 3 as a new background.

PaulieC

Thanks 5uspect...