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© 1998 by Mike Bresciani. All Rights Reserved.
It can be fun to take an old picture of someone and make changes to it. You can take that old picture of the guy that dumped you, and make it look like he is in the pits of hell. Very therapeutic. Or more practically, you could put someone into that family picture, when they weren't there for the original photo session. So mom has a complete picture.
Either way, a big part of doing this is getting a selection around the person in a photo, so you can copy and paste, or just change the background. There are several ways to accomplish this task. In this tutorial I will show you how to do it using the Lasso tool with some assistance from the Path tool.
For this tutorial I used a photo out of the exercise folder on the CorelDRAW 8 CD #1 so you could follow along. The picture I used is D:\exercise\photos\677061.wi.
After you load the picture press F4 to fit it to your screen. Then select the Lasso tool from the Mask tool flyout. Open the Tool Settings Roll-Up and set a tolerance of about 15 to start with.
The first inclination is to use the Lasso tool to click around the figure to enclose the whole thing. If you do, you will get a selection something like the one below. This happens because of the difference between the brightness of the top and the bottom of the photo. As the background gets lighter the tool sees the colors as being out of the tolerance you have set and treats them as the edge of your selection. So depending on what tolerance you have set, the selection will either spread as you go lower on the photo, or it will encroach into the figure's space. If you are very patient you might be able to find a tolerance that will work through lots of trial and error. Maybe.
The Lasso tool works the same as the Magic Wand, in that it uses a Seed Color in combination with the tolerance setting to determine the selection. The first place you click the Lasso tool on a new selection determines the seed color and the tool looks for all the pixels that fall within the tolerance you have set, that are also in the area you selected with the tool.
Since that didn't work so well, lets do the mask in sections. Make sure your mask mode is set to additive.
Now choose a section where the darkness of the background doesn't change too much. If you start in the darker area of the background, keep to a dark area. Start the next selection so it will overlap the first one. If you make your selection too large and the tool gets some of the background, just undo it and try again with a smaller selection. This picture will give you an idea how I used the tool to get my selections. As you add each selection the mask will grow to include it. Leave the area with the bottle alone for now, we are going to do something else with it.
After you have the edges defined, use the Freehand tool to select the inside of the figure to complete the selection.
For my selection all I want is the figure of the man. I don't want to include the shampoo bottle. So what we will do is recreate the shoulder area using the path tool to get the curve of the shoulder, and the clone tool to color over the part of the bottle that overlaps.
Select the Path Node edit tool. Make sure the tool settings are open. If not, double-click on the Path tool to open it.
Let me just cover a few basics about using the Path tool.
There are two basic modes for the tool, Add Nodes which is used to add the nodes of the path, and Edit Nodes. Edit Nodes is used to move the nodes, change the curvature of a line segment, break, join nodes together, etc.
When you start, you will be in Add Nodes mode. Just left click to add each node. As you add each node a line segment will be added between them. To close the path you can add the last node on top of the first one.
After you have finished adding nodes, select the edit mode in the Tool Settings dialog.
With this mode active you can move the nodes to place them exactly where you need them. If you drag a selection around several nodes you can select them. Once they are selected you can change the line to a curve.
Once the line is a curve you can move it with the edit cursor. Like a rubber band stretched between the two nodes.
If you have never used the Path tool before, you might want to experiment some in a blank image to get the feel of it.
Draw a path. Start with a node that is on the corner of the area we will define. Just draw a triangle, and overlap the selection that is already there. Make sure you make the last node on top of the first one so it closes the path.
Select the two nodes on the outside edge of the shoulder. Change them to a curve. Drag the curve to fit the slope of the shoulder.
Make sure you are still in additive mode for the mask. Make a mask from the path using the Path To Mask button at the bottom of the Tool Settings dialog.
Now select the clone tool.
Increase the brush size. Make it large enough so it won't take you all day to fill the area. Right click on an area slightly below the bottle, so you are cloning the red shirt into the bottle. Then left click to paint. Use strokes that go the same direction as the wrinkles. Once you have the area filled, clone some from the top left edge. Stroking in the direction of the shoulder curve. This is to bring in some of the lighter color and so the wrinkles don't appear to go all the way to the edge of the shoulder.
We are almost done. Zoom in and pan along the edge of the selection looking for any areas of the background that got included in the selection. Sometimes it is easier to see them if you turn on the Mask overly. To get rid of them select the Mask Brush tool. It's the last one on the Mask tool flyout. Set the mask mode to subtract. Then paint over the selections you don't want. Make a pass over the figure also. To make sure you didn't miss a part of it. You can fix these with the Mask Brush tool in Additive mode.
Okay, The mask is finished. Make sure you save it. You wouldn't want to lose all that hard work!
Now lets change the background. Make sure you have saved your mask! Then Feather the mask. The amount you feather it will depend on the size and resolution of your image. This original image was about 1016 X 1526 pixels, at 96 dpi. I used a feather of 5, Direction of Inside, and Edges of Curved. If you feather too much the edges will look fuzzy, if not enough the image won't blend in with the new background very well. You may need to experiment some.
Okay, as I was saying feather the mask, then invert it. Your mask will shorten around the edges. You can fix it using the Rectangle Mask tool in Subtractive mode to get rid of the edge effect.
Now hide the mask marquee, to make it easier to see how the edges blend.
I got this next part from Bill Whelan. If you don't know him, he is active in the Corel newsgroups helping people understanding how to use CorelDRAW and PHOTO-PAINT. His technique is good for adding a background, since it gives you some flexibility in how the image is added.
After you have the mask ready (don't forget to save it), go to Effects, Artistic, Canvas. Move the dialog over so you can see your image. Click on the load button and navigate to where your background image is located. If you don't have one you'd like to use you can find the Fill tiles in your Photopaint directory at \Custom\Tiles (more are on CD#1 at d:\custom\tiles). If the image doesn't tile well, use Stretch to fit under Tile Offset. Experiment with the settings some. How to use them is pretty intuitive.
Whew! Here is the final picture. Of course rather than changing the background, you could have copied the selection and pasted it into another photograph.
Using CorelDRAW to Make Quilting Blocks · Creating a Painted Effect from a Photograph · Using Grayscale Masks in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Adding Color to Black and White Photos With Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Fun With Photos -- Selecting Objects Part II · Fun With Photos -- Selecting Objects · Using Corel PHOTO-PAINT's Image Sprayer · 3D Web Buttons with Rolled Edges Tutorial · 3D Web Button Tutorial
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