How to bleed photos with diecut shape in Photoshop?

[szabolcsk66074642]

I have to make diecut POS materials ready for printing and I have to bleed complicated images around its shape, like a beer bottle packshot and a human figure. Is there any automation in Photoshop that I can use? I mean I tried to go around the edge of the images with the stamp tool but it is way too time consuming. Any help would be very much appreciated here...

[c.pfaffenbichler]

You could try Conten Aware Fill but ultimately some manual input may be hard to avoid. 

[davescm]

Hi

Try this
Duplicate the image layer

Make a selection of the image and save as Alpha 1

Select > Modify > Expand the selection by the required bleed width and save as Alpha 2

In Image calculations Subtract Alpha 1 from Alpha 2 as shown below and output as selection

You now have a selection around the edge - use content aware fill to fill it from the image

Dave

[MoonDesign951]

This solution worked very well. Just some minor touch-up, but otherwise this worked great!

Is this something that could be turned into an "Action"?

[Norman Sanders]

 Before adding the bleed, be sure to create a keyline drawing on a transparent layer above the image so that it may be used as a precise guide when creating the steel rule die. 

[szabolcsk66074642]

Thank You all for the tips! I tried content aware fill and it works quite well on some images however there are a lot of others that need a lot of manual correction (pls find an example attached). My boss told me that we are expecting tons of jobs like that in the following months, that's why I'm concerned a bit...

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Why are you concerned? Stuff takes time and not everything can be automated meaningfully, so if creating the bleed for an image takes time you have to get paid for the effort, right? 

[Appmester]

Hi szabolcsk, I’m one of the developers of a Photoshop plugin that makes trapping for flexo printing. I think it would also do a great job on irregular shaped images as bleed automation. At the end of this video you will see what I mean: https://youtu.be/tBQZs4SFsN4?t=125 I do not want to sound like promoting that just thought it would be a really good solution for you for mass producing flawless bleeds. Free trial is available here: https://www.retouchxpress.eu/trapdownload.html Let me know how it worked on your images.

[szabolcsk66074642]

thanks for letting me know about the trap/bleed plugin. It indeed works well on irregular shaped objects, fast and good quality on most of the jobs.