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Best34089364g1oq
Participant
May 8, 2024
Question

Need to turn this into a PNG w fully transparent background

  • May 8, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 372 views

Is there an easier way than using the eraser to keep the same structure while removing the mesh in between and dark shadow lines on each stone?

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    2 replies

    Trevor.Dennis
    Community Expert
    Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 8, 2024

    That is a horrible image to have to remove the background from.  Despite what Conrad has told you, and he knows what he is doing, I would hate to have to remove the background.  What might help is that I have an Ai upscaling plugin that has increased the pixel size from its original 830 X 867 to 3320 X 3468 so if you have to resort to a manual selection, it will be easier.  Other people will no doubt have a go, so they can use the upscaled version as well.

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 8, 2024

    I only had the posted screen shot to work with, so I only addressed some approaches, and not whether the image has the resolution for a good background removal, which is a good point that you make.

     

    It does say "screen shot" in their filename, so hopefully, the original does have a lot more resolution and doesn't need an upscale.

     

    This resolution discussion is good because it made me zoom in and I can now see that the mesh holes are not all white, there is an off-white backing material. I think it was included in my example because I increased Fuzziness. But that means Best34089364g1oq should take more care than I did when selecting, not only starting with the full resolution image, but also making sure they do remove just white and not the almost-white backing material. In other words, it turns out that almost the entire background is the perimeter, and as far as I can see there are only one or two actual holes in the interior mesh regions that should be made part of a removed background.

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 8, 2024

    There are so many advanced selection tools in Photoshop that any eraser is probably the last tool that experienced users would try, because it would be too much manual work.

     

    A common strategy is to see if there is anything about the background that is not in the subject, and select based on that so you can hide or delete the contents of that selection. In your example, the background is solid white with no white parts on the subject, so it should be safe to remove all white areas. In this image, making a selection based on white will include the areas inside the mesh holes, saving you a lot of time.

     

     The example shown below is after choosing Select > Color Range, sampling white, and adjusting Fuzziness. Clicking OK will create a selection from that. Then you can convert the selection to a mask to make those areas transparent, or just delete the selection. Both ways will result in the subject with no background. It would take less than one minute. You could do the same thing in one click with the Magic Wand tool, with Contiguous deselected and with an appropriate Tolerance value set.

     

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