A photographer recently permitted me to use some photos he took at me on a shoot to retouch! I decided to a more fun retouch with this particular image and wanted to share the results with you all!

The image was shot against a white background (with an infinity cove) and I used a combination of different things to “cut” myself out of the background, replacing it with another.

If you want to replace your background with a different one, my advice would be to not shoot on a black or white background, but a grey one or a greenscreen background to allow for easy removal of the background. The reason not to shoot on a black or white background is because black is very dark and so hard to neutralise and the opposite is the case for white. It just makes things a lot less noticeable/harsh when you are trying to get rid of things that you don’t want to see. The problem I had with this image was that my hair is so light, especially at the tips. It was, in parts, indistinguishable from the background itself and so it meant that a lot of guesswork could have been involved. I solved the problem by reopening the image but on a very low exposure (you can only do this if you have the RAW files really) and then using that as a template for where the hair should have been.

Anyhow, that’s the only remotely complicated process involved with creating this. The swirly things are some stock I bought a while back, though I doubt they are hard to create in Photoshop. The rest was just dodging, burning and blurring. Ta-dah!

I would like to say that this is my first ever attempt at a background replacement, so please don’t be too cruel about it!