Replacing Backgrounds Would Be A Big Yes

[BKCook Profile]

When I got this program I was hoping that was one on the things it could do
I see now it can't.
Masking to remove a subject, like a portrait with lots of hair seems hard to
do and LOTs of steps in any program
If this program could do that with a special tool and do it good,
many others might look at it just for that.
So far the only things its good for is changing to B/W and background blur.
I hope someone else things its needed?

[ArjunAnthroQA]

Hi BKCook,

You should be able to replace backgrounds in this version. In Area Select, select the background only and after confirming your choice of effect, it will only be applied to that area. Currently you can only do this with the effects that are already in the library, but soon you'll be able to create your own effects and replace backgrounds with your own images.

Is this what you were looking for or have I misread your request?

[BKCook Profile]

Yes, I want to cut out and replace the background
The only replacement I have found is the beach
Everything else is effects only

[ArjunAnthroQA]

When you click Select Area, if you mark the area type as Background, it should bring all effects relevant to replacing background to the front of the gallery for you.

Is there a specific type of replacement you're looking to complete? You may want to set the Area Select type to the type of area that you're replacing e.g ground/sky to filter effects by the type of background you want to replace.

If you're looking for a specific replacement, let me know and I'll see what can be done.

[MacSa Profile]

Hi,

replacing the background with a custom background I choose myself is the most frequent use for me as well.

I even installed the old 1.0 version again, because it let´s me do it by using the "create effect" functionality that is missing in the new versions.

I would propose to implement a filter that allows to import a file from the local PC and blend that with an area - that would make it easy for all users. I don´t think background that are part of a filter will work for may as beside the fact that I don´t like e.g. the beach that is used it also creates some legal issues as I don´t know where the background comes from.

I really like how the background selection and found I ususally get good results with it way faster than using photoshop tools.

Hope either the effect creation comes back soon or the "select a local file" will be imlemented - until then I´ll continue to use the version 1.0 for it.

Thanks - MacSass

[Tony Profile]

We are just in the final stages of testing the completely redesigned node network editor, so that should be available soon. We are also seriously considering adding a new tool on the right that provides a fast and easy workflow just for compositing.

We are interested in finding out exactly the kind of things people want to do with compositing. So could you post what are the use cases where compositing would be useful?


Tony

[MacSa Profile]

Hi,

here is my use case for composition:

Usually the goal is to replace background of Studio shots with a custom background. The workflow for me that I use with version 1.0 by using the "create effect" tools is like this:

- Load main studio shot
- Mark background selection with the SPE tools
- Load a new backgroud image
- Scale background image to size of main image
- Apply filters to background image to achieve desired background that matches the foreground (ususally hue/saturation/brightness and blur), being able to apply other effects would be nice
- Merge modified background into background selection of original image
- Apply some additional filters to combined image

Hope that was what you were looking for. From my point of view that could very well be achieved by providing a effect module that allows to load a custom imgage. Limiting effects to only contain pre-defined images limits the use of the effect. You could allow authors to include a default image that effect users can replace with their own image if desired.

Looking forward to the new effect creation tools - thanks for your continued support and updates.

Regads - MacSass

PS: If you want to see results of this workflow with before/after samples let me know and I can send you samples via PM

[admin]

That's useful information too, but what I was trying to say was we're interested in what kind of things you would use compositing (combining two or more pictures together) for, so for example, replacing the background would be one example, but you might also want to do montages, or put new objects into images, or replace people's expressions if you took several photos of the same person.

Tony

[MacSa Profile]

Ah,

I see - sorry I misunderstood that question. I´m only using it for background replacements currently though ...

Regards - MacSass