1. Shoot subject in front of a white background.
You are just making it harder for yourself if you shoot the subject
in front of a busy background with the intention of extracting them.
Do yourself a big favor and save yourself from headaches by shooting
them in front of a solid color. A very common misconception is that
you must use chromo key screens (blue or green) to get a good
extraction. This is totally false. It may be true for video but not
digital portraits.
2. Properly lighting the background.
You can use a cheap little slave flash to light the background for
you, which makes extractions a whole lot easier. I bought mine at
Ritz camera for $30 and it is worth every penny.
3. A Good extraction is a must!
This is pretty obvious actually. You definitely don't want your
portraits looking fake. To perform extractions, most people generally
use the extraction tool in Photoshop. I use to do the same until I
mastered Photoshop's eraser tools. I get far more consistent results
using the erasers than the extraction tool and you will too with a
little know how.
4. Properly blend your subject with your background.
Chose the color of your background that best compliments your
subjects clothes. Often, colors of the same family work best. Dark
with darks, lights with lights, reds with reds, and so on. This is
often overlooked by beginners but has a very dramatic effect on the
end result. Once digital backgrounds are loaded into Photoshop, their
colors can easily be changed.
5. Vignetting can make all the difference.
Ever notice in many portraits that dark quasi-circular area around
the subject? That is a vignette which is designed to draw the
viewer's attention to the center where the subject is. Many people
instantly will use the burn tool for this purpose. This can be quite
limiting. A far easier and faster tool in Photoshop is the gradient
tool, especially when it's on it's own layer which gives you far more
freedom than the burn tool.
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