Plugin/Action for Removing a Background

[danielk60903791]

Hello all,

Hope everyone is well.

I'm really struggling to figure out how to remove a background on an item. I work in e-commerce and I'm wanting to batch edit around 300-400 photos per week. I normally do this in Lightroom and then use the adjustment brush on items that have similar colour to the background (white on white).

 What I'm struggling to understand is why Adobe Express background remover is perfect but the photoshop one isn't (it's still very good). Is there anyway I can get an action like Adobe Express in Photoshop? The adobe express background remover is amazing but I can't put through 100s of photos.

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, just unsure as to what to do with it.

Thanks!

[Ciccillotto]

Have you tried using Photoshop's Remove Background?

[danielk60903791]

Thanks for your reply. I have, it's just nowhere near as good as Photoroom/Remove BG/Adobe Express. For some reason, it just cuts out a lot of the subject

[Ciccillotto]

I've never tried Adobe Express for the DISCOUNT, if I have time today I'll try it and see the difference. but this result seems strange to me.

[danielk60903791]

No problem at all. I know the problem is that I'm photographing products on a white background. Some of my products are white so there's not much contrast. What I normally do is edit them on Photoroom and quickly use the adjustment brush.

The thing is. Apps like Photoroom, Remove BG, Adobe Express have 0 problems at all when it comes to editing these items. So it's strange to be honest.

Thanks for your help

[Trevor.Dennis]

We need to see the image to have a decent idea of how to answer. The higher the resolution the better.

[danielk60903791]

Photos like this. I understand that there isn't really a contrast between subject and background. As mentioned prior, I'll normally edit these in lightroom and then just use the adjusment brush on items like this. I'm just super curious how companies like Photoroom/Pixelcut can cut these images out perfectly but I can't do it with Photoshop. Thank you for your help 🙂

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

What you can do in this situation is fiix the contrast with Curves or Levels.

Send a copy merged layer to the top of the stack, and use Remove Background on that layer.

Drag the resulting layer mask back to the original layer, and delete the contrast fixing layers.

OK, full disclosure.  I did again with a curves layer, and decided to test the resulting mask maunally using a clipping path, and Remove background has missed a bit of the sleeve. 😞

You can see there is bugger all difference in the with and without curves tonal values.

But there was even less with the original image, so you are really up against it.  It would almost certainly have been better with a coloured jacket, as even with the highlights so close to clipping, you probably have at least one channel with good contrast.   

What it usually comes down to with tricky situations is that we have to accept this has no one click solution, so you do your best with whatever selection method works best, and choose to save as a layer mask.  You can then use other tools, like a clipping mask to edit the layer mask.  Especially true when you have organic soft outlines, and hard straight and gentle curves on the same object.

[danielk60903791]

That's AMAZING. Honestly, thanks so much!!! 

I used to use photoshop many years ago and I've only just started up again. This is massive help honestly!!

I'll play around with what you said. I don't think it has to be 'Perfect', like the sleeve you showed looks really good to me 🙂

Can you do this as an action then? I mean, with coloured jackets it works great. I don't mind manually doing the white ones. The problem is, when the action is complete, the white items have already gone to the folder. In lightroom it's great because I just switch pictures and use the adjustment brush.

This has honestly been so helpful, I can't thank you enough 🙂

[Trevor.Dennis]

I don't think you could do this without some manual input because of how close the sleeve and background are to each other in the problem area.  If you used a Curves layer and click on the little hand icon (Magenta highlight) you can them move the cursor, and see its tonal value reflected on the curve (red highlight).  You can then click to create a point on the curve at the required position, and use it to drag down and make darker.

We can also see a simple histogram behind the curve.  Left to right indicates tonal value, with highlights on the right, but you will have already known this. The hight of any spikes on the histogram, indicates how much content the image has of a particular tonal value.  We can see an empy area right at the top of the curve, so we can clip the highlights by draging the (green highlight) point to the left to the far right of the spike.  You can then drag the magenta highlighted point down to give you your best chance of fixing the contrast because you have targeted the edit points.

This would be close to an optimised fix 'for that area on the sleeve' but it will have made already darker tones possibly too dark for good result with Remove Background at other areas on the jacket.+

Hmmm...  Well it actually did OK everywhere else, but still missed a bunch of pixels in the problem area.

[danielk60903791]

Hi again Trevor.

Thanks so much for your help - I really do appreciate it. Full disclosure, I'm a complete noob at PS.

I've been trying your technique but I'm unsure how you're doing this. So you're creating a larger contrast, then you're selecting subject and making that a mask? 

Is there a default way to make the contrast stronger? My idea is to have this action run on 100s+ items like this per week. It works perfect with better contrasted images. I understand it's very hard to do with white items on a white BG.

I'm just trying to figure out how you actually did all this. 

Thanks so much!

[danielk60903791]

Following on from my last message. I was playing around with things and I selected 'Mask all objects' in the layer panel and it gave me a PERFECT line of the object. I have no idea why it's done this. I'm just trying to figure out how to make this into an action. It also gave me 2 random masks. I'll attach photos.