Blacking out Background

[courtney1490]

Good Morning!

I would like to know the best route to take the black out the background in this photo? Everything i have read pertains to one individual item in the photo and not multiple. Any help or advice will be much appreciated! Thanks!

 

[jcdeboever]

What black? I would start with leveling the photo down to the right a bit, line up with the edge of the fence post. The sign on the fence is distracting. Like the capture of the kids.

 

[astroNikon]

by putting in front of a black background ?

or removing ambient light (shutting down the aperture), then introducing strobe/speedlight to light just the kids. But that would require several strobes, etc.

or learn how to do it in photoshop.

 

[robbins.photo]

This would be pretty tough to do in photoshop I'm afraid. You could select the baseball players using the quick selection tool, copy them to a new layer, then switch to the background layer and use levels to reduce the exposure till it's black or nearly black.

However you will likely end up with certain areas around your selection that won't quite look right without going in fixing them with a brush of some sort, and as a result you'll most likely be a very tedious and time consuming process.

Also since the teams pants are black, well the final result probably wouldn't be all that great from a visual perspective.

 

[astroNikon]

A better solution, since you were using a nikon d7000, 50mm/1.8 lens and Manual exposure, 1/4,000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 250, Compensation: -5

is to move the group further away from the background. Then the background would be more Out Of Focus and the emphasis on the team members.

 

[SquarePeg]

Love the pose, especially the kid front and center. Nice intimidation face! I agree with the others, difficult to get this onto a black background in post without it looking very obviously photo shopped but I like where you're going with that. It works ok with the current background because their unis are such a strong contrast to it.

 

[binga63]

black will present alot of issues the main being the look of a cutout and the lead child's lack of definition...patience and the pen tool...I had a very quick play to maybe give you an aternative

 

[bianni]

How's this?

 

[astroNikon]

How's this?

^^ got rid of that distracting sign

 

[dennybeall]

Just playing with the laptop, the mouse and the new Photoshop Select and Mask. Not a great select but with the new tool it's pretty darn good for an old laptop and a mouse.
Agree the black background is not so good. The vignette looks better to me.