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I'm about to give up. Help please?


Thunderkat

Thunderkat

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For mother's day I got my brothers together to recreate an old family photo. It was hilarious and turned out great. Only problem is, I can't get the 2 pictures to look cohesive. I've done several attempts, but my Photoshop knowledge is very limited and it's just not looking right. Does anyone have any suggestions or want to take a shot at it? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm trying to get this sucker done today so I can have it printed by Mother's Day.
Here are the 2 untouched photos...
Merzboys1988.jpgMerzboys2014'.jpg
 
Hi Thunderkat and welcome to PSG.

Define what you mean by cohesive.
 
Like darkening the background.. and lightening the guys faces in the back (in the new pic)... and really anything else to get the new picture looking more like the old one. Hope this is making sense.
 
Both changes will require some masking. How are you with making selections and creating masks?

Then it will be mostly about Levels adjustment layers. Maybe some blurring of the brother in the foreground.
 
thats actually pretty funny, she'll get a laugh out of that every time she's looking at it
 
I think I would do that with either a Brightness-Contrast adjustment layer or the Levels Adjustment Layer. To use these, make a copy of your photo on another layer. Hide the original for safe keeping. Then, open one of the adjustment layers I mentioned. Adjust the sliders until you get the amount of darkness overall, concentrating on the back part you want darker. Then open the brush tool, select black for the color, and start painting in the MASK. As you paint, you will expose the areas you don't want darker. (if you mess up and need to correct, simply change to white as the color and paint over the areas you need to fix. Hope this helps.
 
Yes Larry. The most forward guy is the wrong contrast and lightness to match the others. Take his picture and use a layer adjustment linked just to that layer and darken it. Bring the right slider over a bit, not too much. Then move the middle slider over a bit to the right till it looks about the same. Your mom won't notice any slight discrepancy or even what you have now. But it appears you are the perfectionist and that's good. Especially if you wish to use PS more in the future.

And I agree with all the other comments. It is hilarious and a great idea to "age" the picture! Congratulations. Your mom will fall over backwards
 
Hey thanks so much for the replies so far! I sincerely appreciate it. haha I am a perfectionist and I love tinkering on Photoshop. Bad combo when you don't have a lot of time! I tried your suggestion, ALB68, and this is what I got.. Merzboys2014afterdarkening.jpg. It's a great start. Better than what I had going. Now I'm on to add ibclare's suggestion to it.. How do I adjust just his picture without affecting the others?
 
This is what I got.
Merzboys2014' (1).png
Basically you use the same methodology if you like. However, to just change the contrast and brightness in the foreground face, use a mask and then the adjustment layer. (got off a bit on my layer mask on the bald guys head-sorry)


Thunderkat said:
Hey thanks so much for the replies so far! I sincerely appreciate it. haha I am a perfectionist and I love tinkering on Photoshop. Bad combo when you don't have a lot of time! I tried your suggestion, ALB68, and this is what I got.. View attachment 44979. It's a great start. Better than what I had going. Now I'm on to add ibclare's suggestion to it.. How do I adjust just his picture without affecting the others?
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Put your cutout of the front guy on a separate layer above.

Now go to Layers>layer adjustment>levels. There will be a check box in that window asking if you want just to affect that window. Check this. Now you will not change the rest of the underlying layers.

Then follow the rest of my above advice the best you can/.
 
This is considerably more complicated to do, but have you thought about putting their current heads on their old bodies? I think that would also get a good laugh!

T
 
What a great idea Thunderkat!!
 
Oh my gosh that would be hilarious to swap the heads. Maybe by next mother's day I'll be to that skill level! haha! So I followed the advice here to the best of my ability and this is what I ended up with. I actually quite like it :rocker:Merzboys2014'.jpg
HUGE thank you's to everyone that replied and helped with this project. This forum is great :)
 
Thunderkat, do you have a larger version of the old photo, say, at least 6 or 7 hundred pixels on the long edge? If not, and it's an old photo, can you re-scan or re-photograph it?

Tom
 
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