Editing Photographs

I had a little fun playing with photographs last night.

A colleague asked me if it was possible to take the following photograph and remove the gorilla, kids and door so only the boy playing the marimba is left.

Now, I have not done much of this sort of thing before, but I figured it must be possible.

I have Corel Photo-Paint 11 (CPP11), which I know has some photo editing features that probably can do the job.

I started by importing the photograph into CPP11. I then, using the cut out tool, cut the Marimba Boy out so that I had a picture with out any background what so ever.

I then attempted to recreate the room without all the additional features. I made the carpet using a portion of the original carpet as the "paint". I repeated this process with the wall. Everything looked to smooth so I used a noise filter to add a little texture.

When I was done, I copied the boy back into the room. On the boy I used the feather tool so that he blends in a little better.

The final result:

It is not perfect as it looks a little artificial. I am not happy with the "halo" around his head either. That said, for a first attempt, it is not too bad either.

We will not be using the edited photo, but it was a great project in terms of learning new things!