# Tutorial: Clean Backgrounds



## kiddo (Dec 6, 2006)

Here is some info on using Photoshop to make nice clean background for photos. I am not good at this sort of thing so be warned.

This may sound a bit complicated, but it rather quick once you get the hang of it.

First here is original pic of pen. I did crop it a bit:






Next select the "pen" tool. It looks like a little fountain pen nib. Then blow up the picture to about 400 to 500%. Hold down the SPACEBAR and the CTRL key and the cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a little plus sign in it. While holding down those two keys, click on the image and it will zoom in. 

At this magnification, the edge of your pen will be a bit fuzzy. With your pen tool, click just inside this fuzzy edge. You will get a single dot. (DO NOT DRAG THE PEN TOOL!!!). Now move down the edge a bit and click with the pen tool again. You will get another little dot and a line connecting them. Continue clicking carefully around the edge of the pen until you get all the way around. When you get back to where you started, click on your first dot to close the loop. All the dots should disappear and there should be a solid line surounding your pen pic.





Once you have clicked your way around the pen, it should look like this:

Hint: As you move along, press the SPACEBAR and the cursor will turn into a little hand. While holding that key down, click on the image and "drag" it along to view parts that are off the screen. 





What you have done is draw a "path" around your pen.
Now we duplicate the picture by pressing CTRL J (control key and jetter j).

Over in the layers palate you will see a duplicate of your image. 
Now click the little icon at the very bottom of the layers palate that looks like a little square with the corner folded over. This will create a new empty layer.

You can click on the layers and drag them up and down. Do so until your layers palate looks like below.

Click on the eyeball to turn off the bottom layer. Your palate should look like this:





Now lets turn that path into a selection...
A selection is just what it sounds like. It means you are going to take that path you drew around your pen and tell Photoshop to turn it into a selection.

("But I'm confused... isn't a path the same as a selection?", no. it is not)

Click on the "Path" tab and Right-Click on the item that is called "Work Path". From the little dropdown box, choose "make selection".





A little option box will pop up. Set the values in the option box to look like this:  And click on OK. That solid line around your pen should turn into the "Marching Ants" outline that shows you have created a selection.





Now click on the Layers tab to go back to your list of layers and click on the top layer. Now press CTRL-SHIFT-I to invert the selection. This is necessary to select the pen instead of everything BUT the pen! Now press CTRL C (control c) to "copy" the selection.

Click that little icon to create a new layer and then press CTRL-V to paste your selection into it. Click the little eyeball(s) to turn off layers until your image looks like below. That checkerboard pattern is Photoshop telling you that that part of the image is transparent!






Now create a new layer and drag it to just below the transparent pen layer and use the "Paint Bucket" tool to fill it with white. The paint bucket tool is in the tool box and looks just like a little paint bucket with stuff pouring out of it. When you have done this you should have something like this:





Here I have repeated the above steps to clean up the little bit of original background under the pocket clip.

After using the pen tool to outline the area, I converted the path to a selection, pressed CTRL-SHIFT-I to invert the selection, and pressed the delete key to erase the bit of background.





Now lets add a bit of a drop shadow. From the Layer toolbar, select Style&gt;Dropshadow





Play with the controls in this box until you get a shadow you like:





Now make the image a reasonable size:





Set the width to 640 (the height will auto adjust itself), Set resample to Bicubic-smoother and click OK.





The last thing I do here is adjust the color a bit. I know this pen is not really greenish, so I do some color adjustments (another tutorial perhaps) and the image is ready!

To finish off select File&gt;Save For Web and adjust your compression settings to something reasonable and save your new image!





Last word: This may at first seem complicated, but is really not. It takes me about three min to do this start to finish and here I hurry so was a bit sloppy.

You spend lots of time learning to turn, lots of time perfecting your finish, spend lots of time learning to use your camera and lights... Don't chicken out when it comes to making the best of your photos.

Kiddo


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## bob393 (Dec 6, 2006)

Thank you.


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## jughead (Dec 6, 2006)

Thanks Kiddo.


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## TBone (Dec 6, 2006)

Kiddo, thanks a lot.  Software to me is usually easy but photo editing is very confusing.


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## its_virgil (Dec 7, 2006)

Kiddo,
Thanks for the instructions. But, when I begin to outline the pen the pen shape is colored in with black and your instructions don't seem to work for me after that. What am I doing wrong? 
Do a good turn daily!
Don


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## kiddo (Dec 7, 2006)

> _Originally posted by its_virgil_
> <br />Kiddo,
> Thanks for the instructions. But, when I begin to outline the pen the pen shape is colored in with black and your instructions don't seem to work for me after that. What am I doing wrong?
> Do a good turn daily!
> Don



Your pen tool is in the wrong mode. This fixes:






When the pen tool is active, you should see like the above in your tool bar. Click where I point. If that dosent set it right let me know.

Kiddo


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## its_virgil (Dec 7, 2006)

THANKS! I'll give that a try. I knew it was something simple.
Don


> _Originally posted by kiddo_
> <br />
> 
> Your pen tool is in the wrong mode. This fixes:
> ...


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## skewed (Dec 7, 2006)

Kiddo,
Thanks so much for the tutorial.  Using this one and the one on perspective shadow, I have really been able to clean up my photos.  I had to convert the instructions for Paint Shop Pro, but that was minor.  Thanks for the help.

Larry


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## laneo (Dec 7, 2006)

> _Originally posted by skewed_
> <br />Kiddo,
> Thanks so much for the tutorial.  Using this one and the one on perspective shadow, I have really been able to clean up my photos.  I had to convert the instructions for Paint Shop Pro, but that was minor.  Thanks for the help.
> 
> Larry



I use Corel Draw / Corel Photo-Shop for all my art work.  Its a very similar process to what is shown at the beginning of this thread.  I too like to add the perspective drop shadow.  (I like to lean to the right however[])  All my images/thumbnails are done this way.  I'll save posting a bunch of pictures.  You can see some of the graphics I've done this way at http://www.ohlemeier.com/webstore

The only comment I have about adding the drop shadows is to be careful about making the shadow too long and wide.  The reason is that you will wind up with a fairly large graphic that is mostly 'white' space.  If you stand the pen up tall with a smaller shadow, you'll wind up with a smaller graphic that will load faster for those who have a slower internet connection.

-Lane


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## Chuck Key (Dec 7, 2006)

> _Originally posted by skewed_
> <br />Kiddo,
> I had to convert the instructions for Paint Shop Pro, but that was minor.
> 
> Larry



Larry,

I use PSP with no clue[:0]  How about a quick tutorial?

Chuckie


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## skewed (Dec 7, 2006)

Lane,

I went out to your website to view your photos, and I see what you mean about white space.  Thanks for the tip.  Nice pens (and photos) by the way.

Larry


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## kiddo (Dec 7, 2006)

> _Originally posted by skewed_
> <br />Lane,
> 
> I went out to your website to view your photos, and I see what you mean about white space.  Thanks for the tip.  Nice pens (and photos) by the way.
> ...



Some comments on file compression...

Wether your pen and shadow are only a few degrees apart, or if they are at 45 degree angles, compressing the extra whitespace adds very little to the size of the graphic. This is true if your background is pure white (or any other solid pure color). 

When your background is not a solid color (even if it looks pretty solid) it will make your image much larger.

The image in the Perspective Shadow posting is only 33k yet it is a rather large picture at 710 by 712 pixels. This picture can be compressed even more without much loss of detail with just a bit more work.

One trick to getting very high compression is to add just a touch of blur to the picture. This may seem counter intuitive, but just a tiny amount of blur masks the pixel breakup you start to see at very high compression ratios. Your eye will not notice the blur near as much as it will notice the compression artifacts.

Below is the image (700x700 pixels) compressed further to only 12k. This is incredibly small for such a large picture. There is loss of detail and sharpness, but on the other hand it's not that bad considering how small the file is.


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## kiddo (Dec 7, 2006)

> _Originally posted by skewed_
> <br />Kiddo,
> Thanks so much for the tutorial.  Using this one and the one on perspective shadow, I have really been able to clean up my photos.  I had to convert the instructions for Paint Shop Pro, but that was minor.  Thanks for the help.
> 
> Larry



That looks really sharp Larry! I'm glad someone can understand my gobldygook and get it to work! I'm not very good at explaining things and I almost deleted the post before submitting it because I afraid people tell me I'm full of it and not make any sense.

You inspire me to make some more postings of how to edit.

And is especially cool you adapt directions to work with PSP! 

Kiddo


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## bob393 (Dec 8, 2006)

Kiddo, Thanks, I wish it was as easy as you make it look.[]


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## its_virgil (Dec 8, 2006)

I get one problem fixed and another crops up. Why are all of my layers locked and I can't seem to get them unlocked. They are locked when I start a new file and each new layer I create is locked. Really annoying.
Help!
do a good turn daily!
Don


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## kiddo (Dec 9, 2006)

> _Originally posted by its_virgil_
> <br />I get one problem fixed and another crops up. Why are all of my layers locked and I can't seem to get them unlocked. They are locked when I start a new file and each new layer I create is locked. Really annoying.
> Help!
> do a good turn daily!
> Don



It's normal for the background layer to be locked when you open a picture. However, new layers should not be locked by default. To unlock a layer (except the background layer) you should just be able to click the little lock icon to toggle it to locked or unlocked.

But I agree this must be annoying so I will see if I can find out what setting would cause new layers to be locked by default and then let you know how to change it.

If I can't figure this out myself, I can ask some real photoshop wizzards I know. They are gonna ask me: "what version of photoshop are you using" So if you can pass that on it would help.

Kim


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## Daniel (Dec 11, 2006)

Thanks for that instruction. I have been able to do this in Microsoft picture it for a couple of years but have never gotten it figured out in Photoshop. it will be nice to be able to work in just one editor for a change


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