Jared

In my November 30 – December 6, 2008 Photo of the Week, I posted a picture of my son. In that posted photo, I removed the background and placed a backdrop in place to give the appearance that the photo was taken in a studio. The backdrop is one of my own creations and in this post I will describe how I created that backdrop.

1. Create a new image preferably larger in resolution than the images it will be used in.
2. Add a layer that contains the base color for the backdrop. Think in terms of painting. We will create this base color and then “paint” patches over it.
3. Add a second layer with another color you want to see in the backdrop, perhaps a different shade of the base color or a completely different color.
4. Add a layer mask to this second layer.
5. Make the layer mask the item to be edited.
6. Use the selection tool to select a relatively small area of the layer mask. (We will be stretching this selection in following steps.)
7. We now need to render clouds in this selection. Most editor’s have the ability to do this. In Photoshop it is under Filters -> Render.
8. We now need to transform this selection to stretch it out. It needs to be stretched out to at least fill the image and perhaps stretched beyond that.
9. Repeats the steps of creating the second layer for any additional colors you wish to add to the backdrop.

And now you have a backdrop that can be used to add that professional touch to your home studio images. Simply copy the resulting image and paste behind your subject, or copy your subject into this image. Below is the backdrop I used for that POTW.