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Image editing question
This thread has 9 replies. Displaying all posts.
Post 1 made on Tuesday July 10, 2001 at 15:32
Joey
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when you look at pictures of the remotes, they all have a very clean edges. when i scan pictures and try to cut out the background junk I never get them this nice. how is it done?
OP | Post 2 made on Tuesday July 10, 2001 at 16:31
Tim Wasson
Historic Forum Post
Joey -

What imaging program do you use? Most offer a lasso tool so you can get very exact edges before painting out the background. It's very time consuming, but very worth it.

Also, a lot of these pictures were probably taken with the intent of taking the background out, and shot with that in mind. It makes it a lot easier.
OP | Post 3 made on Tuesday July 10, 2001 at 16:49
Joey
Historic Forum Post
what's the easiest and best tool for this? specifically i'll be drawing some basic cartoons for a webpage and I want to scan and trim the edges perfrectly!! what should I use
OP | Post 4 made on Tuesday July 10, 2001 at 18:22
Tim Wasson
Historic Forum Post
Joey -

You'll be hard pressed to find an image editor better than good old Photoshop. Although aquiring Photoshop legally is not a cheap thing to do, there's ways around that. Although I certainly would not recommend doing that if you intend on making money by using the software. Photoshop, like any software, has a kind of steep learning curve, but once you learn it, there's nothing you can't do.

For a cheaper alternative, check into Paint Shop Pro.
OP | Post 5 made on Tuesday July 10, 2001 at 22:03
Daniel Tonks
Historic Forum Post
If you're talking about the remote photos on this site, they were photographed on a white background -- so only a little tweaking is required for them to look correct on a white screen.
OP | Post 6 made on Tuesday July 10, 2001 at 22:23
Joey
Historic Forum Post
daniel,

YES i'm talking about your photos... what tweaking was required? i'm very impressed and need some help with this one step!
OP | Post 7 made on Wednesday July 11, 2001 at 00:01
Daniel Tonks
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Really nothing but the contrast and maybe the removal of a stray shadow or darker spot.
OP | Post 8 made on Thursday July 12, 2001 at 09:35
Mike Riley
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Joey: sometimes you can select the object you want, using the Magic Wand tool, and get a better grip on it by changing the "tolerance" or "similarity" checkboxes, to a higher or lower number depending on the colour level of the background. A higher value will select more colours; a lower value will select fewer. So, if you have a red object on a pink background, setting the values higher will also tend to select pink. Setting it lower will force it select more red.

The new PhotoShop Elements has a very good magic wand "snap to" control, too, which allows even closer masking. But careful use of the Snap in most programs, and always remembering to click often on the edge of the object to anchor the mask you are creating, will work very well.

And of course you can buy masking plug-ins from people like Extensis. These can be pretty expensive, but check the web for trial versions of plug-ins. Even if you don't have PhotoShop, Plug-ins work with a number of programs, like Corel PhotoPaint and ULead PhotoImpact.

Another trick is to select the object and then paste it onto a clean image with a backgroun that is coloured similarly to the object (or its edges). Then merge the image and reselect with the wand. You will be able to get a much closer mask outline.

Even after all that, you could easily have an edge still showing. You can zoom in to the edge, though, and change the colour to more closely resemble the object's colour: magic-wand select the edge itself, and use the eyedropper tool to select colour from the object and fill the edge selection with that colour.

Finally, the white-edge problem crops up most often when adding shadows, which tends to show the stray colour left around the edge of the object.

But since you are doing original artwork, creating your images on a plain background should alleviate moste of the problems before they start, no? ... Mike
OP | Post 9 made on Thursday July 19, 2001 at 09:07
Mike Riley
Historic Forum Post
Joey: did you ever come back?
OP | Post 10 made on Monday July 30, 2001 at 15:01
WBG
Historic Forum Post
Joey,
One thing that I have run across that makes a big difference is to make sure that "anti-aliasing" is checked before exporting. It will smooth out those edges quite well.
Good Luck,
Bill


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