Expert: LizaL - 12/23/2004

Question
Hello
Happy Holidays!

I have a question for you. I have a graphic (of a globe w/ flags sticking out of it) with a background. I need to knock out the “colored” background and make the background white. I started this task in Illustrator using the paint bucket tool to “white out” the background. BUT the graphic has many “nooks & cranny's”. I know there is a more efficient way of achieving this. Can you provide a solution? Thanks a million for any assistance you can provide!

You can take a look at the graphic here:
www.profileworld.com/globe.pdf


Answer
Ni Nisa,

Happy Holidays to you too!

That's a really pretty piece of artwork you gave me the link for. But you're right, it really does have the nooks and crannies, huh!

Your approach in Illustrator is a logical one, but you're right, there is a more efficient way in Photoshop. But I do have to warn you, with all the fuzziness and intricacies of that graphic, it will still take you some time, and some precision (as well as patience!), to make it look right. I also think you'll need to use a combination of techniques.

I'm assuming you have skill in Photoshop -- you mentioned Illustrator, and I'm just making an assumption that you have and know Photoshop. But if anything I say isn't clear to you, don't hesitate to post back and let me know!

Anyway -- what I'd do first is open the document in Photoshop, and to delete the largest areas, like the big parts of the sky, you can use any of the selection tools, like the rectangular marquee or the lasso. Select the area to be removed with one of those tools, and then go under the Edit pulldown menu and select Cut. This will let you take out huge chunks of the picture without having to deal with the little tight places.

For the little tight places, you could try the Extract filter. Go under the Filter pulldown menu and select Extract, and you'll see your graphic come up. Use the highlighter tool (top tool in the Extract filter's tool box) to draw a border all around the area want to keep, and then fill that area with the paint bucket tool (right below the highlighter). Make sure you enclose an area before you try and fill it. Once it's filled, click on OK, and your extracted graphic will appear in a regular Photoshop window.

I did a quick little movie -- and I was pretty sloppy with this, but I just wanted you to get the general idea, LOL!

http://little-works.com/all_experts/extract.mov

As you can see, once you've extracted something from a background, you'll still have to do some cleanup. I used the magic wand tool (second from the top, on the right, in the Photoshop tool box), and selected those extra bits of blue, then used the Cut command to delete them. But at any rate, Extract is one way of grabbing a big area and pulling it out of a picture, fast.

Another way is to use Quick Mask. I did another quick movie to show you how:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/quickmask3.mov

(There are also a couple of other quick mask movies in that same directory, if you want to check those out.)

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 again, the bad news is that you'll probably have to go in and do some extra touch-up work to get the stubborn areas out of the picture.

Another tip when using the magic wand: Select the magic wand, and click on an area that you want to delete. Then hold down the Shift key, and click in another area you want to delete. This adds to the original magic wand selection you just made. Keep clicking, and you'll keep selecting. When you're satisfied with the amount you've selected, select Cut from the Edit pulldown menu, and presto, your selection is gone!

Hope this helps! If not, please don't hesitate to let me know where you're having trouble, and we'll work on it.

Lisa