removing the background

[Dark Atheist]

now i have tried every way imaginable to get this to work and thanks to bmans suggestion i have managed to do this one or twice but two issues remain.

The first is that the hair or strands of either have to be removed or you leave the background in, which spoils the pictures

or

You get little bits of the background left as you don't quite get close enough to cut it all out, so when you place it on a black or white or what ever colour canvas it looks horrible

I have googled and tried every tutorial i can find - some really easy, some hard, i have tried extracting, paths, channels, you name it i have tried it, but which out much success, is there any other advise some one could give me besides - give up or send me the picture and I'll do it for you, as i would really like to try and learn how to do this myself.

I have even watched all the you suck at photoshop videos on youtube, may not mean to be informative but they sure are funny

 

[mlakrid]

how about a pic and what you are trying to do?

I doubt I would be much help, but it would help to see what we are talking about...

Mike A!

 

[Dark Atheist]

the picture is a bit risqué - not need or graphic - is just something i have been messing about with in order to make a wallpaper for someone, so not too sure if i can post it here, all you really see is her bum cheeks nothing else.

What i am trying to do i have said above

 

[Erbmaster]

I spose it really depends on what the background is, and the contrast betweeen the areas you want to keep and the background.

You could select the areas with the wand (very low selection radius..1 pixel for detail) with or without selection masks.
Once selected, remove/delete/recolour/blur/. etc etc depending on the size/colour differences.
You may even find this easier once you've got the image pasted on a high contrast background to make the bits you want to delete easier to pick out.
I'm not sure of any quick 'n' easy methods. Haven't used Photoshop for a while.
I'd always tended to zoom right in to pixellate areas and eliminate unwanted detail that way

 

[Dark Atheist]

yes i think i have tried that method

 

[Erbmaster]

yes i think i have tried that method

Then why do you have areas remaining you don't want?

Zoom in so you're looking at huge squares, at that scale you can eliminate things pixel by pixel. You probably won't need to go that close, but it's a sure way if eliminating all the detail not needed.
If there isn't too much to do it isn't too bad, but if you have a lot, then i'd retry the original selection with tighter parameters on the selection feathering maybe.
Otherwise it's a real time-killer editing large areas as described above.
Once you have the desired detail removed, you can then mask the desired finished area, and feather/soften the edges to hide the sharp pixellated edges.

 

[Dark Atheist]

i said i tried the method - i never said i tried it your way

 

[Erbmaster]

It can be painstaking, but if you get the original selection right it saves a lot of fiddly editing on the detail. Time well spent mate believe me lol.
Have a play with selecting the original area again with tighter parameters on the feathering radius settings.
You might even be able to get it good enough in 1 go to save all the fiddly editing altogether. Hard to tell as I don't know what the image looks like.

There may even be selection filters available nowadays, I'm a bit out of touch with Photoshop atm. But if all else fails, the above should work for ya, with patience
Good luck

 

[Not Bman]

Believe me Carpo, I have been trying to do this type of design work many times and I can NEVER get it perfect. I myself don't understand how people can do 100% work, they must spend weeks on one image. That is all it really takes, zoom in 1000 times and spend a lot of time on it, that is the only way. I am too lazy to do that.

There are tons of tricks to help as well. Some as that have been stated, and things as using photoshops tools to remove only certain colours and so on and so on.

Time is everything.

 

[Dark Atheist]

you have any action files (.atn) or brushes or stuff i should look at to aid me in this laborious task ?

 

[Not Bman]

There aren't really any brushes or extensions to help with this type of work, yet I have never really looked for them that hard. This trick is older, and I am not sure if you have tried it yet. Check it out

http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/extracting/extract.html

Not sure the tutorial even says how to get to "Extract", but its at the top of your Filters. I use this more often then other way stated because I find it to be more accurate.

Once you follow that tutorial, you can even open up the original image and use the clone tool to fix any pieces you messed up. Sorry if this is the way I told you already lol

 

[Not Bman]

This might help.

http://www.youthedesigner.com/2008/03/10/adobe-photoshop-cs3-tutorials-extract-complex-shapes/

 

[Dark Atheist]

thanks