Posted by AlexRoss on December 11, 2008 at 10:36 AM
Hi,
I am designing a catalog however the photos have a background, for
example the pictures are of shoes but i can see the table the shoe is
sitting on and the background behind the shoe, is there a way to cut
the shoes out in Photoshop so the background is removed?
If the shots are already taken, there are other folks who can help you more than I can. I hate messing with it.
Therefore I shoot products on very uniform backgrounds so they can easily be "lifted" using little more than the magic wand tool in Photoshop. It's one-click quick most of the time.
If you have the option of shooting those shots yourself, I have the best luck using a light table with a translucent white surface (white plexiglass in our case). Our biggest light table is a flexible 4'x8' unit, but I've field rigged even larger units. Large enough to light a 900-pound, 13-foot whale skull, for example. The key to this kind of shot is the lighting. As a general rule of thumb in addition to your lighting scheme for the subject itself, you want to push 1 stop more light up through the light table so the white surface disappears along with the shadows under the subject, and it appears to "float" in midair over a white background.
That's all a process reminiscent of the "green screens" used in the movie and television industries. White happens to suit my needs and materials best, but any color that's sharply different than that of your subject and uniform will ease lifting. The light table simply eases shadow elimination.
Posted by Robert Fisher on December 11, 2008 at 11:32 AM
You got some good replies at Pop, Alex. They'll work well.
Posted by John Higby on December 11, 2008 at 1:10 PM
I just went through this process myself a couple of weeks ago. Best to shoot it right the 1st time, however if you didn't; you can do the following. Go to 'Filters' in Photoshop , then 'extract' & look at help for the specifics. It's pretty easy. After you extract you'll need to add a layer for your new background, pick a color etc., place your extracted image layer on top & your there. After you've worked with it a little & you still need some help; just e-mail me for further assistance.
Posted by Andreas Resch on December 12, 2008 at 9:28 AM
For hard-edged objects it's often best to create a mask from a path. This gives you very soft unjagged edges. Of course you if you have a lot of images you have to be good with the usage of paths.
Good luck ... Andreas.
Posted by Paul Wegemann on December 13, 2008 at 2:07 PM
I think it depends on how much time you have to devote to this. If you can't reshoot, and you have a lot of images to do, some commercial software like Fluid Mask, Mask Pro, or Knockout would be your best bet.
Posted by Clay Bolt on December 15, 2008 at 4:36 PM
Per Andreas' comment, the proper (or most exact) way to 'knock' out the background out an image is to create a clipping path in Photoshop using the pen tool. Depending on what software package you are using for your layout (InDesign, QuarkXpress, etc) there are a couple of ways to activate the path on your images.
Although clipping paths take a bit of time to get a hang of, they are going to give you the most predictable and cleanest results.
Discussion
6 repliesI am designing a catalog however the photos have a background, for
example the pictures are of shoes but i can see the table the shoe is
sitting on and the background behind the shoe, is there a way to cut
the shoes out in Photoshop so the background is removed?
Thanks
Therefore I shoot products on very uniform backgrounds so they can easily be "lifted" using little more than the magic wand tool in Photoshop. It's one-click quick most of the time.
If you have the option of shooting those shots yourself, I have the best luck using a light table with a translucent white surface (white plexiglass in our case). Our biggest light table is a flexible 4'x8' unit, but I've field rigged even larger units. Large enough to light a 900-pound, 13-foot whale skull, for example. The key to this kind of shot is the lighting. As a general rule of thumb in addition to your lighting scheme for the subject itself, you want to push 1 stop more light up through the light table so the white surface disappears along with the shadows under the subject, and it appears to "float" in midair over a white background.
That's all a process reminiscent of the "green screens" used in the movie and television industries. White happens to suit my needs and materials best, but any color that's sharply different than that of your subject and uniform will ease lifting. The light table simply eases shadow elimination.
Good luck ... Andreas.
Although clipping paths take a bit of time to get a hang of, they are going to give you the most predictable and cleanest results.
Clay