Expert: LizaL - 10/5/2005

Question
Dear Lizal,
   first permit me to tell you what I am using Windows xp Photoshop 7.0 canon 4000 scanner.  And printing on an Epson printer 1280  I do a lot of close-up photography and a lot of butterflies things of that nature.  Quite often I find the backgrounds very disturbing.  I would like to delete the backgrounds  and ad a more flattering color using the gradient tool.  Would it be possible at your earliest convenience to give me  step by step instructions on this method.

Also not long ago I asked you about creating duotones.  Unfortunately I have misplaced the printout of your instructions and it has been a while since I have used your method.  Basically I will scan a color slide and then want to turn it into a black and white photo sometimes using a duotones makes the photo more pleasing.  Again would you be kind enough to give me step by step instructions in your method I wrote to you on that subject January 5th of this year.

            Respectfully yours
             Stewart Arno

Answer
Hi Stewart,

The link to our "conversation" regarding duotones is here:
http://www.allexperts.com/answerq.asp?QuestionID=3849420&ExpertID=60259

That link should take you to your question and my answer. If not, let me know and I'll just copy and paste everything.

Also -- I've got a typo in the title of that first movie I mention, on that page. You should follow this link to see the first movie (I had typed 'dutones.mov'):
http://little-works.com/all_experts/duotones.mov

You can downoad those little movies, too, in case you want to refer back to them. I leave them on my server for one week at a time.


Now about your background removal question. There are a lot of different ways to go about this, and the easiest and best will depend on what your particular background looks like.

The three techniques I recommend are Quick Mask:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/quickmask3.mov

(In this little movie I'm deleting part of the background around the flag.)

Enter quick mask mode by clicking on the right-most button below your color swatches, in the tool box. Double click on this button, and make sure Selected areas is ticked.

Then choose a brush and paint -- you'll see your painted areas appear in red. You can choose brush sizes and qualities according to the areas you're painting in.

What you're actually doing is masking the areas you *don't* want to delete, and painting with red the areas that you *do* want to delete. So when you're finished, click on the exit quick mask mode button, which is right beside the one you clicked on to enter quick mask.

You should see what you painted show up as a selection. All you have to do now is delete that selection by using Cut from the Edit pulldown menu.

But the bad news is that you'll probably have to go in and do some extra touch-up work to remove areas out of the picture that weren't deleted while brushing on the mask.


Another way is with the Magic Wand tool -- this works best with a simple background:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/magicwand.mov

All I did here was set the Magic Wand to anti-aliased (to give me the smoothest selection edges), and contiguous (to select pixels most like the original ones clicked on). Then I clicked on the white areas, which are what I wanted to remove. Make sure you double-click on the Background layer to unlock it first.

Again, you'll probably have to do some manual cleanup.


The third way to remove a background is with the Extract filter.
http://little-works.com/all_experts/extract2.mov

Select Extract from the Filter pulldown menu. Then use the Highlighter tool to draw around the area you want to take out of the picture. Once you're finished (and make sure the edges meet at some point), use the Bucket tool to fill the area you've just drawn around. Hit the OK button, and that part of your image will be isolated from the rest of the picture. Now do whatever cleanup you need to do.


To make a gradient background:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/gradient.mov

Select the gradient tool from the tool box and the choose a gradient from the gradient options at the top of the screen. Then just drag, on a blank layer, holding your mouse button down. Release the mouse button and you'll see the gradient you selected cover the layer.

If you want to edit the gradient, click once on it in the options area where you chose it, and you'll see the different color stops that make up your gradient. If you double-click on any of those color stops, you'll be taken to the Color Picker, where you can change the color of the stop. Or you can click just below the bar where the color stops are lined up and create new stops, or click and hold a color stop, then drag downwards out of the dialog box to delete that particular stop. You'll also see options for saving the gradient in that same dialog box.

Hope this helps --

Lisa