Isolating item in picture - SBB Digital Scrapbooking Forums | Scrapbook-Bytes

heart33 · #1 (**permalink**) 04-21-2006

Okay, I know there has to be an easier way to do this!! I'm going to make my post and go to bed and hope someone has a fabulous answer for me when I get up.

I want to isolate a butterly from everything else in my picture. Using the magic wand and changing the sensitivity of it just isn't working well. I've tried isolating areas and erasing around it. I've tried isolating the item I want and cutting and pasting as a new image. The list goes on and on.

My end goal is to take this item from the picture and save as a png file. I want the edges to be smooth and not jagged as can be with the magic wand tool.

Please help, I have 8 more photos to do. I know there has to be some fabulous tricks I don't know about.

I'm using pspx.

Thanks,

Brenda

Tracey R (Haley64) · #2 (**permalink**) 04-21-2006

Hi PSPX has the background eraser which once you get the setting you need depending on your image right, it works like a dream!
An example is if you have a high contrast object against a simple background it is very easy to extract that image, but if you have a photo where the object and the background aren't very distinct from each other it is harder for the tool to decide which area to take away.

Basically what you are looking to do is what we use to call tubing in PSP, now you can just save them as .png's. You can do a search on google for creating tubes for PSP, read through a couple tuts and get a few different ideas how to do it best. Some of the tuts do not have the exact same tools as PSPX, but close enought to give you an idea.
Here are a few sites I found for cleaning up tubes which like I said are the same as what you are wanting to do:
http://designsbytracirose.com/CTubes.htm
http://www.geocities.com/mandyspsptu...iatetubes2.htm

My steps are these:
background eraser to extract object
selection tool set to all opaque, select the object
modify selection using smooth (remember to play with the settings) possibly a little inside out feather to smooth the jaggies. hth's

heart33 · #3 (**permalink**) 04-21-2006

Oh Thank you, Thank You. You are right, it does work like a dream. I've never used the background eraser tool before. How easy!! It turned out just perfect. It is an item I made and the photo was taken on a pure white background (just as if scanned) so I was so frustrated why the magic want wouldn't pick up the difference. The background eraser did the trick. When I am smoothing, what is the difference if I have anti-alias checked or unchecked? I visually could not see a difference but I know if the option exists, there must be one.

Brenda

Tracey R (Haley64) · #4 (**permalink**) 04-21-2006

Glad it worked!!

I can't really tell or explain the difference about anti-alias, I just always leave it selected whenever I get the choice, as I do know for everything I do it is a good thing!!

Doris · #5 (**permalink**) 04-21-2006

Oh gosh....If you did have a white background, possibly your tolerance was set at 0. Increasing the tolerance to a higher number, may have allowed you to select all of the white that way and then deleted. As Tracey said the easer tool works great, I use it often.... but if you are lucky enough to have a solid background color, increase the tolerance to see if that works for you. It might not, but I'd give it a shot next time. Happy PSP'ing....