High Key Background

[amyyang]

Damien, I am having a heck of a time with this image printing horribly. All I wanted to do was clone out the line where the flooring meets the paper. I am getting all these artifacts in the prints though. I have tried to fix this twice and, while it is better the second time, The splotches are still there. I'm not sure what to do.

[amyyang]

I've been looking around at how to make your background white, so what I did was make my background white and then do a solid color layer with the same mask in a cream. Then I lowered my mid tones and brightness some on the background. Will that work to prevent all the artifacts in print? Also, should I add a noise layer since I did a solid color fill layer?

[Damien Symonds]

May I see the original?  Before the background fix, I mean?

[amyyang]

[Damien Symonds]

Ok, I think the first thing to say here is: Don't make the background too bright.  The brighter the background, the duller the skin looks in comparison.

So, when you're replacing the background, replace it with exactly the same colour that's already there.  And that, of course, makes the hair masking easy.

Do it like this.

[Damien Symonds]

Download the PSD

[Damien Symonds]

How did you go, Amy?

[amyyang]

Well, I thought it went really well! Until I reprinted. I've attached a version where you can see the lines that printed in the background. I called Miller's because at this point I'm feeling like I want to just start yelling all the curse words I know and they said it's because their printers are so sensitive. I've never had this happen in four years of fading backgrounds and printing with other labs.  

[Damien Symonds]

Gosh. Maybe 5% was too low for the opacity of the noise layer?

[amyyang]

Even when I increase the noise layer opacity the lines are still there. Should it make them fade away? I'm getting both the horizontal lines and the diagonal lines in the print. This just seems insane to me. Have you encountered this before?

[amyyang]

And I should add that I increased the noise to 15% before I printed.

[Damien Symonds]

I'd give a heck of a lot to know if this happens at another lab.