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elindo586
Inspiring
May 6, 2015
Question

How to remove a background from text.

  • May 6, 2015
  • 4 replies
  • 60944 views

How to remove a blackground color from text...

Say Pink background with black text..

I can do the magic wand it can remove all the pink....but I am left with  pink color in enclosed parts of letters such as the "o" , "p" , "R", etc...

Then... I use the magic wand again and remove the rest of the color from inside the letters....

Is there a faster way to remove background color all at once and leave the clear from any color from the background?????

      4 replies

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      whocantell
      Participant
      January 12, 2020

       

      Thsi was done in CS5.5

       

      I know it's an old thread, however, someone might be able to use this.

      It works best for poorly scanned pages of text where you want a white background.

      Save your pdf to "images" .jpg (edit the Acrobat save image settings to save in CMYK)

      I save at 300 dpi.

       

      In Photoshop, load the file, 
      Go into the channels - delete the C, Y, & M channel.
      Go up to Image Mode - change to grey scale (you get cleaner results deleting the 3 channels rather than initially saving as greyscale )

       

      Using the "levels" drag the black over till you're happy with tthe darkness of the text (100 or so)

      Merge the levels.

      If you're happy with the results, save & cary on.

      If there's still some gray, 

      open the curves - and fiddle with the black & white till you're happy.

      Merge the levels.

      Save.

       

      I'm working with 600-700 page documents and build an action to do all this.

      Sometimes the odd & even pages are scanned to different lightness or intensity.

      so I separete pages by "odd & even" into separate folders.and build aseparate action for each.

       

      Sometimes you will wind up with a black bar at the edges where the center of the book wasn't held down flat.

      You can manually clean those if there's not too many,

      otherwise build anaction for that too.

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      elindo586Author
      Inspiring
      May 6, 2015

      This is an example of what I am having after using the wand tool.... then I have to use the wand tool again to clear the letter..

      The yellow are blocks of paragraphs on a document...

      D
      Community Expert
      DeanUtianCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      May 6, 2015

      The Select Similar worked for me with your above image.

      Since it is text, it may be worth trying to convert it to text format. Photoshop does not do this but if you have Acrobat Pro, save the image as a PDF from Photoshop, load it into Acrobat and do text recognition. Them copy and paste that text as a text layer into your Photoshop file. That will give you much more control over the adjustment of text and better blending to the background.

      gener7
      Community Expert
      gener7Community Expert
      Community Expert
      May 6, 2015

      I'd select the black text, the use Select > Inverse to select all of the background. Delete should clear it.

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      elindo586Author
      Inspiring
      May 6, 2015

      The "inverse" option would delete the background into a transparent...  but still.... I would need to select every letter on from a paragraph, and then fill the ground...  filling after the selection with the wand tool works faster in this case....

      Ideally... I would like to select similar pixels within the area of the wand tool selection...   that way I could clear the enclosed areas within the text from such letters like P, B, O..

      gener7
      Community Expert
      gener7Community Expert
      Community Expert
      May 6, 2015

      Uncheck "Contiguous" in the Magic Wand Tool Options Bar.  It gets all the letters if you select one. Then Inverse. If you want a White background, Cmd/Ctrl-Delete will use the Default White Background as the fill.

      I use this method, it's just very quick if the text is black.

      Gene

      D
      Community Expert
      DeanUtianCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      May 6, 2015

      Once you have made your selection, you an choose Select > Similar from the top dropdown menu. That will select pixels of the similar colour to ones previously chosen. You can change the tolerance number to adjust the range (the smaller the number, the lower the colour range).

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        elindo586Author
        Inspiring
        May 6, 2015

        Is there a way to limit the "similar"?  It selecting the pixels from all the document into pictures I don't want deleted.....  If I could limited to a certain area to cover the a paragraph, that would be good..

        D
        Community Expert
        DeanUtianCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        May 6, 2015

        If there's a small area of the image with the paragraph, I'd copy (or even cut) and paste that into a new layer. Then you'd have more control over the Select Similar as it will only apply to the extent of pixels in that new layer.

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