I want to lift image from photo and then do transparent back

[badger50]

: I want to lift image from photo and then do transparent background.

This is what I,m doing.

Hi Is there any knack of selecting the item from the image cleanly. In my case its a dog.
I use the lasso to go around the object but that leaves a 2mm space where the background shows through.

(Is there a way to use the lasso to make a partial selection then remove your finger from the mouse and then
continue your selection from where you left off ?)

After I have Deleted the inverted selection I use the Background remover to remove the remaining 2mm of background around the dog.

Again is there a knack to using this tool ?
I Googled and it said to keep the removal circule half in and half out of the actual image.

Also is ther a correct setting in the menu bar for the BG/removal tool..Im just experimenting.
my settings at this moment are.
size 18
Hardness 100
Step 10 (no idea what this is for ?)
Density 100
Thickness 100
Rotation 0
Opacity 100
Tolarance 75
Sharpness 100
Sampling: Continuous
Limits: Contiguous
Boxes not ticked. Auto tollerance and Use all Layers.
Box ticked: Ignore Lightness.

Hope you can help.

[LeviFiction]

If you're asking if there is a way to perform a free-hand selection with stop and start points....yes there is.

Freehand selection (lasso) tool has four modes. Freehand, point to point, edge finder, and smart edge.

Freehand you just draw and once you stop drawing it completes the selection. One way to handle this is to change the mode from "Replace" to "Add" then you can add new parts to your overall selection without having to be so sloppy.

Point to point allows you to make very quick selections choosing each new point and connecting it with a straight light. Very handy if you don't care about accuracy.

Find Edges attempts to read the pixels between clicks and magnetically snaps the selection to those edges. But it's not restrained so it will choose fairly liberally.

Smart Edges attempts to define a bounding box between points telling PSP that the edge you want the selection to snap to is within the bounds of the box. Supposed to be slightly better in lower contrast areas where the edge isn't necessarily easily defined.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihWIX3Ifbe8


The background remover tool is not a use for all situations tool. It works best with near solid colors (skys, simple backgrounds) and that sort of thing. The more you have going on in the background the less efficiently it works.

Shaprness is how sharp or blurry the edges are. When you have firm edges you want a higher sharpness, when you have softer edges you want a lower sharpness. This is because with softer edges colors tend to mix and bleed into each other so the fur on a dog, for instance, will have a lot of color mixing near the edges of its fur because fur is soft. So when going around the dog, unless it's a very sharp lines, you'll want to bring the sharpness down. For most jobs, a sharpness of 70 is good you rarely need it any higher.

I also suggest you leave auto-tolerance turned on to account for any variable colors. Auto-tolerance continuously samples underneath the brush to help you find edges and adjust to variances in color in the background. With it turned off if you move the brush over similar colors and that tolerance remains at a high level like 75 the chances of it erasing colors you wanted to keep. Auto-tolerance attempts to adjust to prevent that as much as possible. It doesn't always work but it's better than nothing.

I attempted two very simple tutorials on using the Background Eraser tool

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRgHaVMxgEY
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHfk6VIJE1Q

[badger50]

Thanks Tim for the explanations.
The utube videos were of a great help.

[badger50]

Great help Tim....Thanks