Place a flower on a new, coloured background - How to?

WesternGuy

I am fairly new to Photoshop in that I haven't used it (CS6) very much in a couple of years. I am trying to remove all of the background stuff in a wildflower image and replace it with a solid coloured background, so that I end up with, for example, a blue flower on a soft red background.

I can select the flower, but at some stage in the selection process, the "selection" jumps from the flowers stem to the entire image and I don't know why. When I have been able to select that part of the flower that I want to keep, I get a bit lost in how to proceed. My understanding is that I need to create a new layer with the "background" colour that I want on it and then, somehow, merge this layer so that my flower layer is on top of the coloured one. It is this "overlaying" that I am finding hard to make work.

Any insight/assistance or reference to how to get this done will be greatly appreciated. TIA.

WesternGuy

SC Photo Designs · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 12:20 am Post subject:

I would use the pen tool to make a selection around the flower, this will give you full control of what is being selected, and you can get really close to ensure a good "cut out", then make the selection, then copy and paste it into a new layer, create another new layer and place it underneath your layer with the selection in it, and colour it however you choose.
If you have any problems let me know

WesternGuy · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 12:54 am Post subject:

Thanks. I will give this a try and see how it works

WesternGuy

WesternGuy · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 10:34 am Post subject:

SC Photo Designs · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 10:36 am Post subject:

Practice practice practice

or I can do it for you lol

WesternGuy · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 11:20 am Post subject:

SC Photo Designs · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 11:37 am Post subject:

Lol, can you show me the picture and I'll try and think of the best way

WesternGuy · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 12:04 pm Post subject:

Okay. Here is a simple example of the flower I am trying to work with. Others may have more complex petals and stems/leaves associated with them, but this is where I started - start simple and understand the process. This is a small jpeg of the original raw image attached (hopefully).
Big Grin

WesternGuy

SC Photo Designs · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 12:30 pm Post subject:

When you're using the quick selection tool, the reason it jumps to selecting the whole image (or more than you want) when you get to the stem is because the stem isn't a very different colour from the background, and it's finding it hard to distinguish what you want to select, do it again, but when it selects more than you want it to, hold down your Alt key and "erase away" the selection, this will make it smaller (this turns the icon to a minus), meaning it will de-select, so you can in essence fine point the area you want selecting, hope that makes sense. I am useless at explaining things :/

SC Photo Designs · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 12:32 pm Post subject:

This is a link to a video tutorial, this is exactly what you need to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vru8BoENiHQ

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