: How can I extend the background of an image? I have purchased this stock image: I wish to extend the pebble background substantially, to fill the image around 4x wider, keeping the same height.

@Heady304

Normally I'd use the rectangle marquee to copy the background (say from just before the turtle to the left edge), paste to a new layer in Photoshop, and then flip that layer horizontally.

I'd make the new layer semi-transparent for a minute while I lined it up the edges. The right edge of the new layer should match and overlap the left edge of the original at the very edge.

Then I'd switch transparency back to 100%.

An additional step would be to merge the layers, duplicate the merged layer, add a lens blur to the top duplicate layer. A lens blur would help the new extended background blend together.

Then add a mask to hide the turtles in the blurred layer (add a black to white gradient on the mask so that the turtles show but there's a gradual fade to the pebble background).

The shadows in the image could be a problem though.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Nimeshi706

If it were me, I'd find a photo of gravel that was similar to the background of that image. Then extract the turtles from the original image and place them on the other (larger) background image, recreating shadows as necessary.

Extracting the turtles and using a separate background image will provide much better results than trying to extend that limited background, especially due to the complex, subtle, variations in the gravel.

Vote Up Vote Down