photoshop question
Discussion
The food I shoot usually has a white background. When I sometimes cant blow out the background by adjusting levels, ie when ive been playing with the lights and do an entire shoot with them set not quite powerful enough, i select the white background with the wand and bump up the brightness.
This leaves a noticible area of blending between the are adjusted (white background) and the subject, which I correct by leaving the area selected and using the gausian blur tool at about 3.5
It works, but not very well.
When I shot my burger, I had to use the magnetic tool and a feathered selection, never had to do that before or since, but feathering was great!
Trouble is, the wand doesnt have a feathering option. And I cant possibly use the magnetic tool as the areas Im selecting with the wand are complex, and usually require 50 clicks with the mouse and 3 adjustments of the sensitivity setting.
Is there a way of somehow feathering a wand selection, when you adjust the levels of the selected area?
This leaves a noticible area of blending between the are adjusted (white background) and the subject, which I correct by leaving the area selected and using the gausian blur tool at about 3.5
It works, but not very well.
When I shot my burger, I had to use the magnetic tool and a feathered selection, never had to do that before or since, but feathering was great!
Trouble is, the wand doesnt have a feathering option. And I cant possibly use the magnetic tool as the areas Im selecting with the wand are complex, and usually require 50 clicks with the mouse and 3 adjustments of the sensitivity setting.
Is there a way of somehow feathering a wand selection, when you adjust the levels of the selected area?
Bob, why not try it another way, which works especially well for a white background, 'image', 'adjustment', 'replace colour'. Select the white, and then increase the lightness, works really well, if there are areas of white in the subject that you dont want to lighten, create a duplicate layer, adjust the duplicated area, then delete the area ona layer mask.
See samples below:
Before:
After:
As with other things, you can use the eyedrop and + on the top of this selection window to add other tones of white. I have found it works well.
See samples below:
Before:
After:
As with other things, you can use the eyedrop and + on the top of this selection window to add other tones of white. I have found it works well.
Bob,
The settings on the magnetic polygon tool are about how it chooses what to select and not select. Its the same with the wand tool but because its a different tool, it has different settings (i.e. the colour tolerance that you seem to be using already rather than contrast). I'm not sure whether the issue for you is speed of selection, or the quality of the final result.
Its a question of the right selection tool for the job as you've discovered. So using a wide tolerance with the magic wand tool may do it for you. Once you have the background selected like this, then I'd agree that using Select>Feather is the way to go. You could also try doing a Select>Modify>Expand by 1-3 pixels (experiment) and then feather afterwards. This will nick a bit of your burger but you may find the results are what you need - not sure.
An alternative to consider, but not one I've tried with your kind of photography is to consider a different colour background. In special effects they use blue or now more commonly green background. It's such a different hue to the subject that selection using a magic wand is easy. The only problem is that you need to watch out for reflections from the background on your subject.
Hope I understood your issue. Shout if not. If you have an example, I'd be happy to have a play and see what approach seems to work.
Stuart
p.s. I'm no expert in anything!
The settings on the magnetic polygon tool are about how it chooses what to select and not select. Its the same with the wand tool but because its a different tool, it has different settings (i.e. the colour tolerance that you seem to be using already rather than contrast). I'm not sure whether the issue for you is speed of selection, or the quality of the final result.
Its a question of the right selection tool for the job as you've discovered. So using a wide tolerance with the magic wand tool may do it for you. Once you have the background selected like this, then I'd agree that using Select>Feather is the way to go. You could also try doing a Select>Modify>Expand by 1-3 pixels (experiment) and then feather afterwards. This will nick a bit of your burger but you may find the results are what you need - not sure.
An alternative to consider, but not one I've tried with your kind of photography is to consider a different colour background. In special effects they use blue or now more commonly green background. It's such a different hue to the subject that selection using a magic wand is easy. The only problem is that you need to watch out for reflections from the background on your subject.
Hope I understood your issue. Shout if not. If you have an example, I'd be happy to have a play and see what approach seems to work.
Stuart
p.s. I'm no expert in anything!
Hi Stuart, the chromakey(sp?) backgrounds are more for use when you want to insert a different background, eg, you want a shot of a model on a beach, shoot the model on the blue or green background, then in PS you put this image as a new layer onto the beach background image, then you make the background colour transparent. Thats certainly my understanding of it but might be ok for stock photos as in Bobs requirememnts.
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