exclude background from photo of sheet of paper?

[mr9813464]

I have a photo of a sheet of paper. I want to output a level, cropped, exact rectangle and maintain raw information

thanks, Mark

[Theresa J]

You can remove the white of the photo by moving the white slider in the light panel to the right until the whites are clipped. After the photo is edited you have to export it to a new file with the edits applied. What do you mean by ”maintain raw information”. The raw information of the original photo is maintained in Lightroom.

[mr9813464]

It is great to get a quick reply.

I'm a beginner in light room and haven't used photoshop recently.

I think your answer is helpful.  It may be I need more familiarity before my questions

are clear. Essentially, my project is the documentation of 2D artworks on paper.  The photos

have been taken. The guided geometry feature of Lightroom works fine for insuring that the

art paper is rectangular. I would like to output without the background that the art was shot against,

which was not, unfortunately, a single selectable color.  Also many of the art pieces were done

on paper with irregular (but straight), deckled edges. So I imagine that the final output might include

a mask to exclude all but the paper art?

Thanks

[Theresa J · Accepted solution]

If the backgrounds are irregular and need masking to remove, you will need Photoshop. Some basic, simple retouching can be done with the Healing brush in Lightroom, but Photoshop is much better.

[mr9813464]

Thanks again for the help.  I imagine I will use photoshop to delete all the background. I think that I can try

selecting the edge of the artwork page and delete the background. I hope that that action will not impact

its flexibility as a raw image.

[Theresa J]

The image will no longer be raw when you send it to Photoshop. I’m not sure why that matters though.

[mr9813464]

I don't know enough to know if it would matter. I am only concerned to maintain color flexiblity to adjust at a printer to match the original artwork. Thanks again.