Family Portrait

It was a bad hair day for the whole family, and junior just didn't want to have his picture taken, but I got this nice family group on a hillside the other day at sunset... :bg3: But seriously, this started out as a picture of a small bonsai display captured at the LA County Arboretum. When I saw this one, I had a vision of what I could do with it. Not sure I really reproduced the vision, but anyway here it is. :c3: A lot of steps went into this one - Topaz DeNoise and Lens Effects (vignette) as well as a couple of Nik filters (graduated user defined and fog). I selected the background, copied it to a layer, and filled the selection with 50% gray. This is a neat trick for doing clean gradient color filters for a bg.

Kerry, this is a wonderful composition. I like the simplicity... the bonsai trees stand out in the beautiful gradient bg. Love the soft colors and your crop. Very nice processing!

Kerry, I love this. Simple and beautiful.

Kerry, I love the gradient bg and the simple composition. Nice idea - I never would have know they were bonsai.

Kerry, This is super! Nice job on the gradient BG and the trees are awesome.

I agree, simple and beautiful. Thanks for the tips on creating a clean BG.

Super family shot, Kerry! Love the BG and your treatment and comp. :S3: Wonderful overall effect.

I like your family! The comp is very effective and you did a great job with the background.

Great title and love your imagination, Kerry! Very nicely done, love the simplicity of compostion, the subtle variety of poses by each family member, great looking BG color and nice job doing the gradient. Thanks for the great tip.

Nice job! It was creative of you to use a bonsai for this image. Love that bg and how the trees stand out against it. I'm going to try to do a bg like you did. Thanks for sharing.

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Originally Posted by Kerry Perkins

I selected the background, copied it to a layer, and filled the selection with 50% gray. This is a neat trick for doing clean gradient color filters for a bg.

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Kerry: I realize I don't quite understand how to changed the bg color. How did you do such an excellent selection? What were the next steps? What does the gray do? Can you tell I'm completely baffled? :-)

Hi Kerry, very nicely processed. Love the moss, the grouping of the family and the beautiful background too!

Anita, I first selected the bg using the "color range" option (plus a lot of work with the quick selection tool). Then I made a new layer from the selection (control J on a pc and command J on a mac). Reload the selection, by control clicking on a pc or command clicking on a mac, on the original layer. Then select "edit | fill" and select 50% gray. Now you have a layer of background that is gray, and completely uniform. Many filters will do good things with that... :S3: What the gray does is give the filter a neutral base to work with. If you apply any color filter to gray, it will turn that into whatever color you select.