Changing background

[porpoise]

Hi, new to the forum so please bear with me. I am in the process of creating a book on whistles but need a little advice on editing the pictures to make them suitable for a book. I photographed them all in landscape mode with a white background, due to white balance issues the background is slightly grey, this is not a big issue because on a white page of the book it does not look too bad nor out of place. I have toyed with the idea of replacing the background with a softer colour such as very pale yellow or plain white. What is the best way to cut out all of the background then replacing it with a different colour, I have tinkered with the eraser tool but it gets very fiddly the closer one gets to the actually body of the whistle and the very subtle shadows given off in the I titian picture. Any advice would be welcomed.

[Joelle]

Hi, new to the forum so please bear with me. I am in the process of creating a book on whistles but need a little advice on editing the pictures to make them suitable for a book. I photographed them all in landscape mode with a white background, due to white balance issues the background is slightly grey, this is not a big issue because on a white page of the book it does not look too bad nor out of place. I have toyed with the idea of replacing the background with a softer colour such as very pale yellow or plain white. What is the best way to cut out all of the background then replacing it with a different colour, I have tinkered with the eraser tool but it gets very fiddly the closer one gets to the actually body of the whistle and the very subtle shadows given off in the I titian picture. Any advice would be welcomed.

You can Adjust the grey-ish background using a Curves Adjustment, click on the grey using the default (white) dropper tool,
To remove the grey-ish white altogether: Promote the Background Layer in the Layers Palette (right-click to access the menu).
Use the Magic Wand to select the background and press Delete.
Or use the Background Eraser, experiment with the size of the brush.
Then you can add a New Raster Layer and fill it with a suitable colour, drag that layer under the whistle layer.

Joëlle

[Forriner]

This is possibly not (only) a white balance problem but underexposure. To make a long story short, you're digital camera's light meter tries to average out everything it meters to 18% grey. This means, if there's lots of white, like your background or in snowy scenes with a lot of white, the exposure will be lowered, turning the white greyer, underexposure. If your scene were predominantly dark, it would overexpose, lightening the black towards grey.

You could try the curves adjustment, click the reset button, and drag the little circle at the top right corner to the left, to line up with the right side of the histogram. This will lighten the whole image, boosting grey closer to white. Don't drag it too far past the right side of the histogram if you don't want to 'blow' the whites.
You can watch the change on the histogram (F7) - watch it move or stretch to the right.

[porpoise]

That is great I will try that out, thank you for your advice.