Removing background from images

[Alex Ross]

Hi,

I am designing a catalog however the photos have a background, for
example the pictures are of shoes but i can see the table the shoe is
sitting on and the background behind the shoe, is there a way to cut
the shoes out in Photoshop so the background is removed?

Thanks

[lefteyewilly]

trace around the object you want to keep with your bezier/pen tool or polygonal lasso tool (pen tool is best). This will create a 'shape' around the object (if using the pen tool, adjust the opacity in the layers pallette to see below the shape area).

If using the pen (if using the lasso tool, skip to the 4th step here) :
-CTRL click on the shape layer (the gray box that contains the path) you just created in the layers palletteto make it a selection
-select your image layer
-hit CTRL+Shift+I to reverse the selection

If using the lasso tool or pen:
-then in your layers pallette click the 3rd icon from the left (circle inside a square)

....this will remove the background layer for you.

[Black_phoenix]

Depending on the complexity of the background you could also use the magic wand and if the table was eg blue and the shoe was red you could use select >color range then invert selection...

the pen tool is the best way, unless you have a wacom (then mask and paint it in by hand) far more fun

D

[pea3698]

We have to do tons of this here with product photography, We use a combination of paths and alpha masking. You can also create an alpha channel and import that into illustrator and do a trace then take the path back into photoshop, the path will be tighter than creating a path from a alpha channel in photoshop.

[groupof1]

I agree with Lefteye about using the pen tool, except I set mine to create a path instead of a shape.

The reason is that depending on how intricate the image is, sometimes the forming shape (read "colored area") will overlap the image you are trying to trace.

Then, in the paths palette, right click on the path and choose "make selection".
This will give you some options to tweak your selection.

[flashcurious]

I like to use the magnetic lasso and the wand tool to select the image and then ctrl+i to inverse and remove the background.. those tools are working fine in earlier versions of photoshop.

[pocketp]

look up vertus fluid mask, if u can afford it. Prolly one of the better photoshop plugins that speeds up the painfull process of masking.