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Request for Help - Background Removal


eaglefan

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Hi Guys,

My name is Dan ... new to the PSG forum. Some great work across here!

Im working on a little project with a sports image of my favourite team, yet i am having trouble getting one image to the way i want.

I am after the background to be removed, with the player still there. This is so i can use, to place on another document and print.

My attempts have all left small pieces close to the body, as well as some jagged body parts and not a clean image when printing. I really need the image to be clean, with no background traces. I don't feel it is a complicated background, just my skills are not up to scratch to get the image to the quality i want.

If any one could help me out, it would be kindly appreciated. I can paste the image via photo bucket link or send across via email.

Thanks, Dan.
 
Thanks Paul. You may not like the team if you follow AFL. Lets hope you do! Go the Eagles!

jk.jpg
 
Ok, new to Photoshop... I know you can select the guy, but how do you do the selecting so straight and perfect? I try to lasso and I just cut into things or get more than what I want.
 
You can't cut out that straight with a lasso (or at least I can't). There are several ways to cut things out, but the best way to cut out of a busy background like that is by using the pen tool. It takes practice, but there are several decent tutorials both here and elsewhere on the web.
 
for me the trick is not to select him at all.
i just use the eraser then i just select the small bits and change the radius of the eraser to remove those small bits.
using the eraser is how i get the slight transparent edges
 
I have done all the ways you mention above. I usually find by the time I am done finessing edges with an eraser, brush, lasso, that I could have finished in that time doing the entire image to near perfection with the pen tool. So that is my tool of choice. I occasionally still use the quick select or color range if it isn't critical.

But as Sierra said, the most flawless results come from the pen tool. I will say Dataflow, you did a good job with your method.
 
Pen tool will always be the best method.
What I would do is similar to what Dataflow would, except I would make a pen mask over the person, select the pixels of the mask, hide the mask, and go to the picture layer and copy him from it. Afterwards I would select the new layers pixels and I would retract the pixel selection by a few pixels and feather it a bit and then invert the selection and delete it... Which would lightly add a small opacity gradient throughout the edges of the person.
Although, lighting always has to be taken into consideration before finalization...

Both take about the same amount of time, dataflow did great and by hand that takes some skill.

Pen tool all the way tho!!
 
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Hi Everyone,

I am glad I found a Photoshop forum. I am new to photoshop obviously, and am having trouble. I am able to remove the background from my picture just fine, but cannot figure out how to save the image so that I can paste it into a new background later. When I save it as a PNG or PSD file, it gives it a white background that I cannot get rid of. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am using Adobe Photoshop 7.0. Thanks in advance.
 
I think the best selection method is hard to say every image is different I prefer to use the calculations command via channels for the more difficult objects. Quick select for simple things mix with quick mask or just a layer mask to touch up my selection. Select colour range can be very powerfull as well as long as you hold down shift key to add more colours but you may have to use another selection tool just to subtract from rest of image.

Or more recently starting to try out plugins like remask or perfect mask
 
Wierd as it may sound to most of you, but my favorite way of selecting an object is not by pen tool but by selection via quick mask mode.

Yeah i do this also, especially when the background is basic. Zoom in and blow off those edge pixels.
 

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