Ghosting a subject in a picture

Doug Schruth

• August 28, 2019 02:01

Evening

 

I have a photo of mine that has a couple walking away from the camera.  The gentleman in the photo has passed away and  I have been asked if I can "ghost" him in the picture.  There will be a memorial and this is one of the photos that she wants to have there.  

Not being real proficient with On1 I am stuck.  Can someone at least give me a workflow or a tutorial would help?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Doug

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  Paul Meachen

  • August 28, 2019 03:26

  If you mean something like this it's fairly straightforward.  I made a copy of the original and cloned him out - doesn't have to be too clean as you'll hide that part.  Open the two versions in layers with the original on top and then reduce the opacity to taste:

   

  

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  andrea pedrazzini

  • November 02, 2019 10:51

  Interesting, but which is the best way to create the portion of sea and Sky behind the gosted figure?

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  Rick Sammartino Community moderator

  • November 02, 2019 14:48

  The background is already there, you're just adding the 'ghost' on top of it. Remember that he was completely removed from the photo before the ghost was added back in.

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  andrea pedrazzini

  • November 02, 2019 23:50

  Sorry for my poor English, probably I have not understood...

  Is the original picture the left one with the man "before ghosting"? If yes, the man covers part of the sea and the sky which actually will be  missing in the picture. If you make him transparent you have to create the missing sea and Sky.... 

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  Doug Schruth

  • November 03, 2019 00:03
  • Edited

  Thanks for everyone's help.  In order to do this picture I had to replace the background behind the man.  Came out pretty good but will be re-doing it walking towards a sunset.  

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  Rick Sammartino Community moderator

  • November 03, 2019 00:45

  Oh, I see what you mean. In Pauls first post, he said he cloned the man out.

  For an example, I just tried it with this photo on the top layer...

  

  Then duplicated the layer and simply erased one bird on the lower layer...

  

  Then fading the top layer gives you the ghost...

  

  It took all of 5 minutes. Might have taken a bit more if I wanted to do a better erase job.

   

   

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  andrea pedrazzini

  • November 03, 2019 07:56

  Finally I got it, thank you Rick!!

  The questione was: what is the best tool or technique to use besides the stamp to recreate the missing part?

  I think you have duplicated the layer and sfifted the new layer so that the part to be erased(the duck) coincides with an area with water. The result is excellent if there are uniform areas, but in the example above it is difficult to obtain a realistic result with the water (the water that replace the duck will difficultly merge with the background water )

  Is there some other suggested tools / tecnique? 

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  andrea pedrazzini

  • November 03, 2019 08:06

  ....the perfet eraser is very goog but it does not work when you have to remove a big subject like the above  duck

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  Paul Meachen

  • November 03, 2019 09:41

  Andrea, as I said in my original post, it's not that important to do a really good job with the cloning (which is the method I used) as you're going to cover it with the original image.  Before I did the merging it was quite apparent that the image had been edited - but you can't really tell in the final version.

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  andrea pedrazzini

  • November 03, 2019 10:10

  Paul you are right, in this case where you are covering the modified part with the original nobody will note the edited part.

  But when you have just to remove someting you do not want to appear in the picture and replace it with the background, which is the best way to do it?

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  Rick Sammartino Community moderator

  • November 03, 2019 15:48
  • Edited

  Andrea, in On1 you only have 3 tools. Eraser, Retouch and Clone stamp. It's a matter of combining them to get your results.

  There are some videos here that might help use the tools properly. If you're a Plus member, the course by Scott Davenport is very good. There are at least 4 videos that are not Plus.

  https://www.on1.com/videos/?fwp_video_library_search=clone&fwp_video_library_categories=on1-photo-raw-2019

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  andrea pedrazzini

  • November 04, 2019 07:12

  Thank you Rick, 

  Unfortunately I'm not a Plus member and probably I lost some useful tips on the subject.

  When using the stamp tool, it may happen that the cloned part of sky or sea is slightly different in tone or color respect the closed areas. How can I adjust these small differences ? Is there some automatic brush which make smoother the transition between the newly copied area and the existing neighboring area? If I try to apply the perfect eraser along the borders of a cloned area, the result is typically not good..

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  Brian Lawson Community moderator

  • November 04, 2019 13:52

  You cannot easily edit the areas you've cloned with the Stamp Tool. It would involve creating a mask for just that area once you've found the right filter for editing it. Much easier to Undo any clone that doesn't look right and find a better source area to clone from.

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  andrea pedrazzini

  • November 05, 2019 20:51

  Thank you Brian, it is clear

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