Background eraser tool settings PSPRo 2018

[Ken Veal]

I am trying to make the background all around a building transparent using the background eraser tool.When I have finished and saved the file as a .png, I get loads of "speckles".Can some one please me the most appropriate settings to avoid this.I have tried brushing over the chequerboard to get rid of the black dots which takes for ever but is not working, there must be a better way
Ken

[hartpaul]

Post sample image please.
Reset that tool to its default settings using the button in the dropdown box for presets.

[Joelle]

I am trying to make the background all around a building transparent using the background eraser tool.When I have finished and saved the file as a .png, I get loads of "speckles".Can some one please me the most appropriate settings to avoid this.I have tried brushing over the chequerboard to get rid of the black dots which takes for ever but is not working, there must be a better way
Ken

I don't know about the most appropriate, but I attach a set of settings which were recommended by Kris Zaklika, a former PaintShop Pro manager.

Joëlle

[Ken Veal]

Thank you for the replies.I have attached a screen shot of the png image taken from the main video track in Video Studio 2018.

SCEEN SHOT.JPG (24.84 KiB) Viewed 2282 times

[LeviFiction]

The background eraser is only meant for erasing the background immediately around the subject. Not the entire background. It's not perfect, and the more variation, such as trees and grass, you have the more likely it is to leave some stuff behind as the colors fall outside of the tolerance it sets automatically.

It has always been my experience that the normal procedure is to erase along the edges of the object, then clean up the rest with the regular eraser tool. For near solid colors like the sky you can turn off auto-tolerance to force a certain value if the automatic settings just aren't working very well.

[Ken Veal]

So if auto tolerance is de selected, is the idea to set a high tolerance number and try that, what would happen if it was set too high ?

[LeviFiction]

The reason for the auto-tolerance is to remove the guesswork and just let the software handle that. In some cases, you want a lower tolerance so it's only erasing colors that are very similar to the sample point (center of the brush) a high tolerance lets it select more and more dissimilar colors. So if you set it too high it'll start to cut into the object you're attempting to preserve. This is why it's usually preferred to only use manual tolerance for flat colors when and only when auto-tolerance is failing to achieve a desirable result since there is very little variation you have to worry about.

You might also try working with a slightly smaller brush so that it's not trying to erase so much extra data and only worry about the area immediately around the object. Not guaranteed to help but always worth a try.

[JoeB]

The image you posted seems to show that the object you wish to keep has mostly clean, straight edges. Have you considered simply using the Point to Point selection tool to select that object and then inverting the selection and hitting the Delete button to delete everything around the object?

[Ken Veal]

With auto tolerance selected, I initially brushed around around the parrot perimeter with the background eraser and then used the eraser to cover the rest of the background.Not a speckle in sight!

PARROT SCREEN SHOT.JPG (16.68 KiB) Viewed 2203 times

Thanks for all your advice
Ken

[Jean-Luc]

More about the Background Eraser :
http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html
Text from Kris Zaklika who created it with its team in Jasc time...

[ehume]

More about the Background Eraser :
http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html
Text from Kris Zaklika who created it with its team in Jasc time...

Quite a find. Very informative.

Edit: info on PSP here: http://campratty.com/questions.html.

[hartpaul]

That is brilliant Jean-Luc. THank you for that. Corel has a lot to learn from the information distributed by Jasc in the Pre Corel days.
Thanks also ehume for finding the source of other tuts from that site.