Cropping Tutorial

[webmasterjunkie]

I have a picture that I would like to remove the background from so that I can just have the opersons picture. The background is very detailed, and most parts blend with her hair.

Can someone point me to a tutorial to do this. I have Fireworks and Photoshop, so whichever one will work.

Thanks in advance.

[N30]

Have you got the image you want to crop. I could probably tell you if it's possible.

I use fireworks and i suggest the freeform select tool with a 1 or 2px feather, it should be able to do the job.

[Weedy Lady]

I do this all the time, and it can be done, but it takes time. Sometimes a lot of time. Use the lasso tool to remove most of the background. Then, select about a 4 pixel square and move it and delete, pixel by pixel, until you have the head shape you want.

Then, use the pencil tool and fill in whatever you need to as fas as colors to make the hair look right.

Work at 800x magnification.

An example is the little thumbnail of me on these postings. I cut out my head from another picture, then added the new background that I wanted. For another example, with 12 heads cut out and put into a composite picture, see my "jury duty" card at http://www.happydaycards.com/thoughts/juryduty.html

Be advised that this is eye-strain time when you do it this way. There is probably an easier and quicker way, but this works for me and I get what I want........pixel by pixel.

Remember to save your work every few minutes by using "export preview" so you don't wind up losing a couple hours work!

YOu can also remove garbage cans and trash from pictures of people's yards, and copy and paste a few pixels at a time to build the grass area or the driveway back up. It's only fun when you are done and the thing looks good!

[DrTandem1]

Be sure to use anti-aliasing on the main parts of the image or you'll have a lot of little jagged edges. Hair is a very tedious task to cut around, if it's wispy or feathered. Even pixel-by-pixel may not look good.

Practice-practice-practice.

[rocky1]

Using Photoshop myself, I usually duplicate the background layer (your original image) a couple of times and simply use the eraser tool. Eliminate one copy of the image altogther and give yourself a solid contrasting color in background, if it's a dark background go white, if it's light go Black, so you can see any missed spots. This can be done after you have cropped the object as well, the point in doing so is... if you apply any blending options i.e. backshadow, or place the image over a solid background any missed spots may show up.

You can select the Background Eraser Tool if there's significant contrast; around the torso where clothing is substantially different this may well be a time saving option, but where you suggest the hair blends into the background, it won't be.

Then, as Weedy Lady suggests, I enlarge the image, decrease the eraser size to 5 - 10 pixels and take my time. Yes it is time consuming and monotonous but there's not much else you can do.

[pmhb]

Anything is possible and as to SW, it's much too much a personal preference. I would use PS since I'm way more experienced with that than FW.

However, it's gonna be far easier to help and/or advise if we could see the image in question.

[DrTandem1]

I realize you already have PS and FW. For those that don't have either, there is a far less expensive alternative, Paint Shop Pro. I think they're on version 9, now. It's well below $100. By the way, it can open layered files that were originally created by PhotoShop.

Fireworks has many other features that Paint Shop Pro and Photo Shop don't have. It's great for creating pop-out menus and such. However, for simply editing graphics, I have found that the other two are much easier to use and have better results.

[noel_x99]

I used masks and layer masks a lot for fly-away hair.

I make a quick selection with one of the tools and then turn on the masking. I'll vary the size of the brush and opacity as I work. I tend to select more than I need rather than less.

Then I copy and paste my selection onto the new background. I'll use layer mask at that point to clean up problems and blend the fly-away edges.

[davebarnes]

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...=1047022702205

appears to be a good solution.

[richkoi]

Vector masking in Fireworks is my favorite way to crop out complex images.

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/stu...masking04.html

Just trace the image with the pen tool (you must know how to use the pen tool to do this) and then change the color of the traced shape to white. Select the new vector shape and the bitmap you traced over and click Modify > Mask > Group as Mask.

If you need clarification, let me know.

Rich