Tutorial on Removing Unwanted BG

[Jim Victory]

I have been asked to provide some PS steps for removing unwanted backgrounds from pics such as fences in zoo shots. I would like to thank Gary Steele for teaching me this little trick and allowing me to share it with you.

First I want to state my position on altering photos. Myself and many photographers will spend countless hours on getting the shot just right, so that what we see in our viewfinder is what you see posted, with little or no Photoshop work applied to them. I still stand by that philosophy; however there are situations that are completely out of the control of the photographer and some alterations are made to bring the picture to its potential without sacrificing the accuracy of the photo. I know that if myself or others make such alterations then the alterations made are clearly stated with the posting of the picture. Photographers have done this since the invention of photography and I do not want this post to turn into a debate about those merits of these or other techniques.

I feel that some of the people new to photography here might not be posting some of their shots because they think that their pictures may not be up to some of the work they see here. It is more than likely that they haven’t yet learned some of the processing to get their pictures to look that way yet.

I also have seen some really fantastic pictures that I or others may leave a comment like this. “This would be perfect if only the background were a little softer or had something removed from it�. The poster is sitting there scratching their head thinking, “If I knew how to do that, I would have done it�.

I will be the first to admit that my Photoshop skills are not very good, but I have learned a few things and I am going to share one of them here. I am sure there are a great number of people out there that know of an easier or better way to accomplish what this tutorial is about. I just wish I knew those methods. So here we go.


This is the before picture where a fence in the background distracts from the photo. There is nothing that the photographer could do to make it disappear.


This is after the fence has been removed and you can see quite a difference without any degradation to the subject.


The first things you want to do are open up your picture in PS and make all the necessary adjustments to get the picture the way you want it without any sharpening. Save it. Now open up the saved picture like this.


I always duplicate the Background layer so as not to make any alterations to it like this.


The next step is to select the edges on the duplicate layer by going to Filter, Stylize, Find Edges and this is what you get.


Now select the magic wand and set the tolerance to about 30, you may need to play with this setting so as the wand does not select something that you do not want altered, and click in an area of the background that is the most neutral to the background. Now you will see most of the background selected.


Now you will need to do some additional background selections to make sure that everything you want altered is selected. You may want to deselect some items if necessary. I normally use the Lasso Tool to make these selections like this.


Now that you have everything selected that you want, go to the menu and click on Select then Select inverse or just use this key combination (Shift+Ctrl+I). What you have done now is selected everything that you do not want altered, this will make sense later. After you have selected the inverse select the background layer again, this is important that you select the background layer because you will be copying from it to the new layers. Now create a New Layer via Copy. This new layer is everything that you do not want altered.


Next press Ctrl+Left Click on the new layer and this will select a mask of everything that you DO NOT want altered. Now Select the Inverse via the menu or by pressing (Shift+Ctrl+I). Now on the layers menu Click and select the background layer again and you will have something like this.


Next Create a New Layer via copy and you will have the layer that you want to alter. Notice that this layer is below the unaltered layer and this is important so that you do not have any fringing around the edges of the unaltered layer. The next step is to delete the Find Edges layer and you should have something that looks like this.


Now select from the layers menu the layer you want to alter, on mine it is Layer 2. Now that you have this layer selected go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur. Start with a radius of 1 pixel and gradually increase the size until the background looks just like you want it. On this photo a radius of 5 looked about right.


Now you are all done, you can merge the layers or what ever or sharpen the want you want then merge. That is it, pretty simple after you have done it a few times. Below is all the history that was created doing this sample.


This is by no means an absolute fix to areas that may not be what you want. You will need to experiment on each and every picture that you try to repair. Some are more complicated than others. Some you will have to use a different selection process other than finding the edges. I just hope that this will open up to you some of the powerful tools that are available for you to use. One other thing is that you can not make a make a silk purse from a Sow’s ear. You must start with a quality shot to begin with.


I hope that this will help someone in the future. As I have always stated this is the best place to learn photography on the Web. For the new shooters out there, whether you think your shots are good or not, post them. Ask for advice and someone here will be glad to give it. Don’t take feedback or critiques personally because they are never intended that way.

[Hogleg 44]

Very Interesting. Thanks for the tip Jim. I will print this out and try it.

[sbug_adam]

very good tip jim. I'll def have to remember that one!

Adam

[Craig Wilkins]

Thanks Jim I will save this & try it this week or weekend on some of my zoo photos.

[Abel]

great tip Jim! thanks a ton for sharing with us... i know i can apply this knowledge to a few of my photographs with those pesky backgrounds...

thanks.

[Capt. Ray]

Thanks Jim. Something I can definitely use.

[Steelsun]

I never thought of using "Find Edges" as an easier way to isolate the background for masking. Thanks for the tut, I'll have to try it now.

[rhrocker]

Jim, I recently joined this forum, and just now had a chance to read this tutorial. I really benefited from it, and appreciate the time and effort that went into it. I needed to learn this very procedure, and had been working through some books, however I have it down now. Many thanks!
Robert/Uvalde

[Abel]

again thanks for the tutorial...

also, is this similar to what tom does with his tiger pics?

[Jim Victory]

Originally Posted by Abel

again thanks for the tutorial...

also, is this similar to what tom does with his tiger pics?

I believe Tom may use this to help remove unwanted backgrounds. The fact is Tom is not very knowlegeable in photoshop. He does surprisingly well with the limited knowledge he has.

Where Tom makes the difference is in getting the shot right out of the camera so it doesn't require much PS. He takes the time to make sure his exposure and comp is right before he pulls the trigger. That includes framing the shot so you don't have a distracting background to fool with.

You may want to play with othe PS actions in addition to or besides the gausian blur. I sometimes will do some cloning and dodge and burn in addition the the gausian blur. Since the subject is isolated in Layer 2 you don't have to worry about overlapping a clone or dodge&burn.