Cleaning Up the Background and Foreground

Friday, November 18, 2011

Cleaning up the Background and Foreground

     There are many listings on e-Bay whose photos are distracting and busy. The background has other items in the photo or what the item is resting on is also distracting. Nevertheless, these items sell. However, with an extra 10 minutes, you can clean up the image to make the item for sale more attractive. The item below is a listing of mine - a 6" long Hubley Cast Iron Toy. It's nice but slightly distracting.

I used Fluid Mask 3 (by Vertus) to create the selection patterns.

You have the  choice either to use the red brush (to remove), or the green brush (to keep portions of the image. I changed the red circle (remove) for the green (keep) brush (below).

The green will be the portion of the photo that remains

After you've brushed the keep areas, you use this tool (mask) 

to keep what you selected,and remove the rest.

Here's the result. After you say "OK", Fluid Mask 3, which is a Photoshop plugin, closes down.

You then continue your work in Photoshop.

I wasn't 100% on the selection, because I knew that I could use the Photoshop eraser to remove the rest easily and speedily.

I then used Photoshop's magnetic lasso to separate the unnecessary parts to be discarded from the

actual Hubley truck.

The next step is to create what is called a gradient.

A "gradient" is a subtle change in a similar set of colours or tones form light to dark.

The squared selection on the left is the gradient button.

Now you add a duplicate layer to work with.

Creating the Duplicate Layer

The Duplicate layer to work in.

The Result.

Theres some "distractions" that I missed about 2" above the roof of the truck. 

They appear as smudges on a computer screen. I'll clean then up later.

Flatten the 2 layers to one.

Now there's only 1 layer

The final result.

I also cleaned up some distraction in the background that wasn't seen when I had originally removed the distracting areas in the photo.

I'm sure you'll agree that this photo is much more presentable and that it focuses your attention on the truck more now than before.

  We can be "a little fancier" by adding a shadow and then adding both the shadow and the truck to a gradation. It's a lot more work, but I'll show you anyway.

Here's the truck file again

I'm going to add what is called a "drop shadow" in Photoshop

Here's how the "drop shadow" selection looks in the layers window

This is the control window for adjusting the shadow

I'll leave it up to you to play around with the parameters

Here is the effect

I've added a white background, otherwise against the checkered background, 

you would not see the shadow. Also, I wasn;t able to just select all and then paste the truck and shadow in the other file of the gradient (below).

Here is a gradient that I made.

Start with a new file, and make it  bigger in size than the truck and shadow.

You want to leave space around the truck and maneuver it to your liking.

I like to position it at 1/3 from the bottom (please see later).

The file will look empty until you create the gradient.

The darkened icon above is the gradient tool

A cross appears, and what you do is drag the cross from the top to the bottom.

You can also drag the cross in any angle that you want.

Here's the gradient again

Here's the Fire Truck and Its' Shadow

I need to Isolate it from the white background.

I know you probably think why the extra step.

Thuis is how Photoshop works!

You sample the tones or colors with the eyedropper.

Each time you use the + eyedropper, it expands the areas of selection.

It's easier to select white than all of the different tones of the fire truck and its' shadow.

Once I've selected the whites, I can "invert" the selection. This will capture the truck and shadow.

One of the controls is the border selection.

The larger the number, the more it moves inwards of the "inverse" selection".

I chose  22 for the pixel width (above).

Here's the final result.

The white outline around the shadow is an error!

I don't know what I did wrong, but I'll be working to correct that!