Advice for selecting out a dress from a background

[Allistair Crossley]

I have attached an image of a dress on a background. I have a bunch of these photos. Some dresses are dark, some colored, some textured.

I need to remove them from the background, which is always this dark cream/brown color.

Sometimes the dress edges are similar but always different to the background.

I know a bit of photoshop and have tried a range of things. I am looking for the fastest way but the best result if no fast way exists.

I have tried:

1. Quick select, tweaking tolerance and using refinement to smooth (still creates a somewhat messy edge)

2. Smart quick select as above.

3. Replace color on background (affects the dress often - could potentially try masking out the dress but I fear the edge will end up looking too sharp)

4. Quick select refined by quick mask brush-based select. Edge is inconsistent. The lines need to be super smooth.

5. Pen too. This was my best result in terms of sharpness, but takes a little longer than I'd hoped.

I just wanted to see if anyone had any further suggestions for this kind of task.

Thanks!

[Hoogle]

this is what I got from a channel selection and then deselected some of the dress with the quick select tool in subtract mode similar could be achieved with select colour range.

it will need the mask fine tuning on edges due to similar colours though

[Allistair Crossley]

Thanks, I forgot about channel selection, i'll see if that works

[$1r_M4x1mu$]

Hi Allistair Crossley

If you want a clean selection and edges, i'll say the pen tool will be your best bet for this job.

I know is a bit time consuming and tedious, but it is worth it.

[Paul]

Pen tool for me also.