Difficult photoshop task - please help

[reyz]

Hi,

I've got a task in photoshop that I simply can't do, and I can't find anyone so far who can provide a solution that works. I have a picture of a girl in front of a parking lot (see below), which has white lines behind her. Those white parking lot lines need to be yellow. The problem is that they fade into a big blurry blob in the background, so every solution I find is either too difficult to do manually (drawing the lines individually on top with color overlays), or changes the overall color of the photograph (color tweaks in LAB, etc.), and/or simply looks fake and added-in. Can anyone here with better photoshop skills than I offer a good solution to this? (My skills with photoshop are pretty basic, so if you can explain any solutions well, I'd appreciate it greatly).

Thanks!

http://www.intensitywebdv.com/melissa/melissa-small.jpg

[Intbel]

I'm well out of practice with P'shop though I remember most of the basics.
The attached may give you a starting point?
Apply fade or whatever filters as appropriate.

[reyz]

Hi Intbel,

Thanks for trying, I appreciate it. If you go through and manually select the lines like that and then apply colors and blurs, it becomes impossible when you get up into the blurry area at the top where the lines and the pavement aren't clearly delineated. Unfortunately, I need a different, more automated solution.

Thanks anyway!

[Intbel]

Hi Intbel,

Thanks for trying, I appreciate it. If you go through and manually select the lines like that and then apply colors and blurs, it becomes impossible when you get up into the blurry area at the top where the lines and the pavement aren't clearly delineated. Unfortunately, I need a different, more automated solution.
Thanks anyway!

Can not you just fade into those areas?
A bit of fade here, blur there?
Like I said, I'm out of touch with P'shop and a regular P'shop user will have a simple solution.
Sure it won't be difficult.

My solution would be to totally redraw the background without the girl and then plonk her on top.
Good luck.

[pauland]

OK, I don't use photoshop - I have had a quick go using Xara and it's not perfect, but perhaps you can use a similar technique in photoshop:

Take the picture, greyscale, invert, apply as a transparency map over a yellow rectangle. This gives you a yellow map to overlay the original image, then mask out from the overlay parts you don't want to 'yellowise'. Apply transpareny to yellow mask as required.

My quick go doesn't quite do it, nor is the mask perfect. Hopefully you get the idea from my poor explanation.

Good luck.

Paul

[Intbel]

OK, I don't use photoshop - I have had a quick go using Xara and it's not perfect, but perhaps you can use a similar technique in photoshop:
Take the picture, greyscale, invert, apply as a transparency map over a yellow rectangle. This gives you a yellow map to overlay the original image, then mask out from the overlay parts you don't want to 'yellowise'. Apply transpareny to yellow mask as required.
My quick go doesn't quite do it, nor is the mask perfect. Hopefully you get the idea from my poor explanation.
Good luck.
Paul

And that's why I'm out of touch with P'shop ... just no need to go there these days.

[pauland]

My explanation wasn't too good - here's the simple version. Because the lines are white, you can use the grey tones in a greyscale (inverted) version of the image to produce a trasparency mask for a yellow overlay to turn the white yellow. The yellow overlay should be cut to only cover the road. In my example, I suspect that increasing the greyscale contrast would have helped to just colour the white lines and not the rest of the road.

Yes, intbel, Xara is pretty good, even for bitmap manipulation!

Paul

[pauland]

OK, I couldn't resist another go. If anyone is interested, I'll show all the steps used on the Xara extreme forum, provided the OP is happy for me to do so. I won't put it here because I didn't use photoshop.

Paul

[pauland]

Reyz, how are you getting on with this?

[BlueFlare]

and/or simply looks fake and added-in.

That's the issue here, because no matter whether anyone does a perfect job, it will still look fake. For some reason our brain doesn't accept what it sees, because it thinks the yellow lines are out of place. Btw, why do the lines need to be yellow? With my photography experience I don't consider it an improvement, actually a distraction.