Darkening a background in Photoshop?

Tinytony

Hi,

A total newbie with photoshop 7. What I'm wondering is if there is a way to dull the background of a photo that i have so that the foreground stands more clearly?

Roen

The Burn tool is your man for that.

snellers

depends on the picture but you could try selecting the images you want to stand out (using a mixture of tools including the magic wand) then creating a new layer with the selection.

darken the whole background layer (make sure it is selected) using a very large brush or chosen method and it won;t effect the selected images (as they will be on the layer above

The advantage of this method is you won't accidentally burn any parts you want to stand out ....it works better with certain images - give it a go!

Tinytony

Cheers lads, don't even know what half the tools are yet, but at least it's pointing me in the right direction. Thanks

ZENER

You could also try Image>Adjustments>Shadow Highlight. Works if the subject is lighter than the background and even visa-versa with a little bit of playing around. Have you tried Adobe Lightroom for Mac/Windows or Aperture on the Mac.

ZEN

Wez

Zener, don't think that'll work seeing as it's PS 7 - that's not in until CS (8)..

I reckon the handiest way would be to select the area using the lasso/magic wand and adjust using Levels as this will give the most realistic look.

Unless you Burn on a very low (~10-15) strength. Handiest way to avoid an uneven edge (imo the only downside to ther burn tool) it to select only the area you want darkened with a suitable feather (soft edge). You can also choose between Highlight-Midtones-Shadow to fine tune what you're tweaking.

It'd be much easier if we could see the image you're talking about, whether there's much detail there or not.

Hope this helps!

Tinytony

Wez wrote: »

Zener, don't think that'll work seeing as it's PS 7 - that's not in until CS (8)..

I reckon the handiest way would be to select the area using the lasso/magic wand and adjust using Levels as this will give the most realistic look.

Unless you Burn on a very low (~10-15) strength. Handiest way to avoid an uneven edge (imo the only downside to ther burn tool) it to select only the area you want darkened with a suitable feather (soft edge). You can also choose between Highlight-Midtones-Shadow to fine tune what you're tweaking.

It'd be much easier if we could see the image you're talking about, whether there's much detail there or not.

Hope this helps!

Cheers for that.

This is the image:



It's not the greatest shot in the world, and i know it's a bit noisy due to the distance and lights (and the fact it's a not DSLR). I thought it might just look abit better if the background was a bit darker.

Thoie

I had a very quick go at these
v2 - turned the audience b&w
v3 - lowered the brightness and upped the contrast on the audience
v4 - blacked out the audience.

Tinytony

Thanks for taking the time to do those. V2 is the look I'm kinda after for it, if you wouldn't mind would you be able to explain how you darkened the background while keeping the main subjects bright?

Thoie

Tinytony wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to do those. V2 is the look I'm kinda after for it, if you wouldn't mind would you be able to explain how you darkened the background while keeping the main subjects bright?

I'm not very good at PP yet, but here's what I did. Using a combination of the rectangle select tool and the magic wand, I selected all the bits in the background that I wanted to darken. I'm using Gimp, but I think it's the same for Photoshop. When you have one bit selected , pressing shift before selecting the next bit adds to the selection. Once you have everything selected that you want darkened:

go to colours, Desaturate, and then select the options there you want. Ctrl-Z usually undoes the last change you make.

For all 3 pics the beginning was the same for the selection. V3 went to the colours, brightness and contrast option and played with the sliders. V4 I think I just turned the contrast all the way up or down so it went black.