Removing background (picture with similar color)

[cadudesun]

Hello,

Reference tutorial=> Remove Photo Backgrounds with the Background Eraser (http://www.corel.com/corel/pages/index. ... id=1200137).

a) I follow the tutorial above to remove backgrounds. However, the background has similar color than picture (in this case "white" - picture attached - FIG_2). So, when I use "background eraser" tool, it erase part of my picture as well. So, could someone give any tip about handle it properly?

b) The tutorial was usefull to other image that has different backgound color (FIG_3 attached). But using other software (Gimp) I could just take the transparency index (color=> color to alfa) with "one click" without the request of erase background manually. So, is there any similar way to do it easily in Paint Shop?

Thanks in advance,
Cadu

[flagpole]

those are pretty easy to do. the magic wand selection tool on the white would do.

i did this one by splitting into RGB layers, the red one had good contrast. darkening it with overly layers, then adjusting the contrast. to make effectively a silhouette, then using that image to create a mask layer on the original image.

of course the forum ads a white background, but if you open the image you'll see it's ok.

there is no one solution. if you get little grey fringes, like in this case, you could magic want, expand, and turn down the brightness.

[LeviFiction]

Tolerance and sample mode are also important.

The background eraser tool is meant for more solid colors and only for going around objects, not erasing the entire background. For solid colors like this you want to turn off auto-tolerance and lower the tolerance enough that it's not sampling the near-white from the full white. Also change from a continuous sample to a single sample so it doesn't accidentally sample a light-grey and erase into the image.

Normally you wouldn't have to change these settings but sometimes you need to fine-tune what the tool does automatically.

Also depending on the level of anti-aliasing you may want to either increase or decrease the sharpness value for the tool. If you want the edges to be very sharp and rigid then bring it up to around 70-75. If you want softer edges bring the value down a little. This will help to avoid those nasty left-over white pixels.

[teknisyan]

On both images, if you just want to remove the white background, just like what flagpole said, you can use the magic wand and it'll select all similar colors (in your case the color white) then just delete it.

But you need to make sure that BACKGROUND COLOR on the Materials Palette is set to TRANSPARENT and the Layer for your image is not set as background but as RASTER (you can do that by right-clicking on the layer then select PROMOTE BACKGROUND LAYER.

When you use the magicwand selection tool, it should look like this..

before deleting


After deleting

[cadudesun]

Thanks everybody for prompt answers!

I think I will need to improve software usage to deal with FIG. 2 (the man).

However, now I ask for help to deal with FIG. 3 (network form) please

I tried to use “magic wand” and “background eraser” changing a plenty of configurations. Always, the outputs weren’t as good as Gimp software output (attached comparison and each file). Using PaintShop the edges got jagged. Is possible to achieve perfect contour/outline?

Also, I would appreciate additional explanation to: Gimp original (png) file size has 630k. I just open it through PaintShop and "save as" png and the size decreased to 25,4k. Is there any loss quality in this situation? Why PaintShop - using same type (png) - decresead too much the size?

Cadu

[cadudesun]

Gimp PNG attached