Damien Symonds

What? You go to System Prefs > Displays, then move the brightness slider, don't you?

Never try to fix a background like this. Only replace it.

Literally just copy and paste.

Hi Pippa, would it be possible to show me photos of the two locations?

The sensible approach is to choose a background colour which is as close as possible to the colour that's already there. I'm talking about the light brown of the wall. Will that be ok? This is for two reasons: The more different the colour from original, the harder it is to mask (as I'm sure you're aware); The light colour you chose in your mockup makes the subjects look dark by comparison. Kinda quasi-backlit, if you know what I mean. So, even though you've shown her the light colour in your mockup, will she be ok with darker (wall) colour?

Yes. Sorry, I thought you'd be able to tell from the mask in my screenshot. I'm not hiding anything from you, I promise. I only did the exact steps you see above.

You've restarted, I trust?

I got the Levels layers the wrong way around. The first layer (should have been "Levels 1") is on Soft Light blend mode, with the middle slider aggressively to the left at 3.00. The second layer (should have been "Levels 2") is on Normal blend mode, with the sliders thus: Red channel: 14/1.06/248 and 0/255 Green channel: 0/1.04/255 and 5/253 Blue channel: 0/0.97/255 and 14/249 Then I Placed the texture layer (File>Place, remember, never copy and paste). I dabbled with blend modes, and found that "Lighten" worked best. It probably will for you too, but no guarantees. You might need to experiment like I did. Then I masked it on very gently. Because my texture was a bit too sharp, I had to apply blur to it. You might not need to do this. Likewise, its colour was kinda too green, so I clipped a Hue/Saturation layer to it and shifted the Hue slider a bit until it was the colour I wanted. Again, you might not need to do this; or you might need to do it even more than I did. Hope this helps.

What I used is irrelevant. You'll need to choose one from your own collection that you like.

For the texture I used a file from a texture collection I have on my hard drive. Do you have any such files?

Actually, no, not this time First Levels layer: Green channel 0/0.50/255 and 0/130 Blue channel 0/1.00/255 and 0/100 Mask VERY carefully to the red part of the flag. Second Levels layer: Red channel 0/0.50/255 and 0/225 Green channel 0/0.60/255 and 0/245 Mask VERY carefully to the blue part of the flag.

Do not - repeat, DO NOT - try to remove the red cast. It belongs there, it's meant to be there, and the photo would look darn weird without it. Instead, make the flag redder. Own the cast. Give me a few minutes, I'll post something.

Even though it looks yellow, and orange in some parts, was the flag in actuality red?

http://www.damiensymonds.net/calibration.html

This is most likely a monitor profile issue, but we won't know for sure until you calibrate. Report back when you have done so.

I made something for you!

(It applies equally to "giving" as it does to "selling".)

How is this?

No, sorry, the repeated patterns are still really obvious. You'll need to find some generic greenery from a different photo to put in there, I think.

Well, the next time you have a photo, post it here IMMEDIATELY. And I urge you to take a little time to read these.

Fair enough. And just to check, have you read this?

He'd pour a tall drink, and start patiently cloning out the most prominent strand. He'd ignore all the thinner wisps, because he values his sanity.

Good on the left, bad on the right.

And stop using Photomechanic.