Isolate Picture of Dog from all Background

[dsmith910]

Hi

I'm a complete beginner at Adobe - so treat me gently, please!

I have several photos of dogs. I need to extract the dog and get rid of all the background. So far I've used the magic wand to highlight either all the parts of the dog, or all the parts of the background - then deleted what I don't want.

I've also tried using the delete background eraser tool.

Unfortunately although I end up with the dog isolated I can't seem to get rid of the edging bits between the fur. No matter how hard I try I end up either deleting the strands of fur which give the image 'life' or having to leave in the green (or whatever colour) in between the edges of the fur.

Any bright ideas - am I doing it all wrong?

Thanks

Doreen

 

[BexConsulting]

The easiest way to to get a picture of your dog against a solid one color background that is different from your dogs color. (ex: If your dog is black then take a picture of it with a white backbround.) Click on edit and Select all. Then click Edit copy and then click on edit paste. This will create a new layer to work with it is some times easier. Right click on the background layer and delete it. This way when you cut out your dog there will be a transparent background. The Best tool to use if you want a very fine detail such as cutting out around furr would be the tool that allow you to click a polygonal shape. The Magic Wand and magnetic tools are not the best for super fine detail. With the Polygonal Selection tool put a 1 pixel feather. This will help smooth the edges. Then zoom in and start cutting and deleting. I am not sure of a better way unless someone else knows of a better solution.

 

[viol8ion]

When dealing with hair or fur, it is tedious and difficult to extract a life like image.

http://www.myjanee.com/tuts/hair/hair.htm

this website is an excellent source of tutorials, and this link is exactly what you want, I think.

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.

http://www.wuli.com

 

[mscallisto]

Hair is Hairy!!

The magic wand isn't the greatest tool for this.
The lasso is a bit better if you blow up the picture and trace small bits at a time, but still hair is hair.

Without seeing the picture of the pooch it's tough to advise one method over another but there one simple tool that may help, the magic eraser.

Click on and hold down the small triangle on the eraser tool then choose magic eraser.

The magic eraser erases colors. If the dog is brown and the room is blue tones, you can erase the blue tones by clicking on them. Repeat the process for other colors.

Tolerance is for radius of color range
Opacity is for percent of erase
Anti-Aliased is for edge smoothing
Contiguous, checked means the colors to be removed must be contiguous, e.g. if your dog has a blue spot and you click on the blue room, the spot will remain if contiguous is checked.

Try it, experiment with the settings, it just may help.

 

[thombathe]

The pen tool is also good for creatind a path then using the
smudge tool on the hair.
Learn the pen tool at

http://www.thombathe.com

thom

The longest jounney starts with the first step.

http://www.thombathe.com

 

[dsmith910]

Hi Guys

I am, as usual, knocked out by all the help I've got from this site. I will try out the suggestions and let you know how I get on. The pictures of the 'pooches' are many and varied so I can't choose the background - usually its grass - which as you can imagine although basically green, does have other tones in there too.

Thanks again.

Doreen

 

[mscallisto]

The magic eraser works fairly well on grass as long as poochie isn't green.

 

[deecee]

i had a green dog -- and the grass was blue where i grew up!

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Sometimes the Answer You Are LOOKING for can be FOUND BY SEARCHING THE FAQ'S @&%$*#!!!
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[mscallisto]

Sounds like Kentucky

 

[viol8ion]

Down south we had an ole' blue hound laying on the kentucky bluegrass... I guess that would've been hard to photoshop!

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.

http://www.wuli.com

 

[mkrausnick]

Back to the topic... A tip when using the magic eraser, or magic wand, for that matter, with the picture zoomed in a lot:
Before hitting DELETE, zoom out to make sure you haven't accidentally selected a part of the dog you DON'T want to erase. This is especially true if you're erasing a color - You can change the color or texture or other visual artifact of some part of the dog without realizing it. Then of course, (personal experience here) you hit SAVE to save you work and only THEN realize the picture is hopelessly damaged.

Mike Krausnick
Dublin, California

 

[mscallisto]

One more method of extracting hair for dogs and people.

Open Poochie file (you need to tell us poochie's name)

Click Filter > Extract

Select Edge Highlighter tool and paint around the edges of the hair (in this case around poochie's edges)
DONT paint too far into poochie and or too far outside either. You may have to adjust the brush size (on the extract window) to be about the size of a standard yellow highliter.


Next pick the paint bucket (on the extract window)

Position the bucket over poochie and click to fill the area to be saved (it will become highlighted inside the edge boarder)

Next click Preview

Click OK

You're done!

(after you open the poochie file (back in step one) you may wish to copy it to another layer and turn off this background layer off by clicking the eyeball)

Then after you finish extracting you can turn this layer back on to see what you started with.

Finally again it's tough to suggest a method to do this without first seeing the image and you may need to try a few methods or combos before you get the results you want.

Much Luck

PS in my previous post (magic eraser) you may want to try it a few times with different tolerances)

 

[dsmith910]

Hi Guys

For the record the Pooche's name is Mork (and yes, I do have a Mindy as well... and come to think of it an Orson too!) - or is everyone too young to remember the programme?

Will try some of these suggestions this weekend and report back.

Thanks again.

Doreen

 

[dsmith910]

Hi Guys

I think I've used just above every suggestion above - and have found a mixture of the advice to work the best. Drawing a line around Mork, then using the wand to select up to the line and extracting the main image, then using the background eraser brush. On some of the photos the only way around the 'hairy' problem is to convert to a 'painting' style - dry brush or whatever which then gives thicker strands to work with. Anyhow as you may have guessed I'm almost there......but.....

Is there a way in Adobe to 'mirror image' something? I now have several photos which I want to put together as a sort of collage - but one of the images would look best if it were the reverse way round. Any ideas? I guess I must be getting tired - Adobe has just about anything your little heart could desire -but what on earth does it call 'mirror'. Help!!! I'm almost there!

Thanks

Doreen

 

[mkrausnick]

Under IMAGE / ROTATE CANVAS, choose FLIP HORIZONTAL.

Mike Krausnick
Dublin, California

 

[mscallisto]

We're all happy you are almost there!! but suggest your next poochie is one of those hairless ones, you can call it &quot;Baldy&quot;!!!

Much Luck and keep plugging on with pshop