Some photoshop magic

While trying to composite some photos for our newborn daughter, we had taken a series of pictures of hands and feet over some white and black sheets. There was a really good hand photo over the black sheet, and a good picture of her feet over a white sheet. Since it didn't quite look right to mix them up, I went about coloring the white black.

Here is the photo over a white sheet.



Here is an example of the technique I used to extract the hands. It is from Scott Kelby's photoshop insider site, with a guest lesson by Deke McClelland.
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/5384

And here is the same photo over black


Though this is as good pixel by pixel as a selection can realistically be done, selecting and masking like this is always at best imperfect, and this was no exception. Despite the fact that the white was not difficult to select out, the hands really do not look like they were photographed over a black background. The lighting looks too artificial because the hands picked up reflections off the white sheet, as if there were at least another light behind and underneath the hands- which it wouldn't have over a black background. I would have needed to add shadows on my hands, and that takes artistic skill rather than technical skill.

Eventually I just photographed the feet again over a black sheet.