Outline hires image and delete background..how?

[Scott Andraschko]

Hello, I'm the users wife and have a question regarding Adobe CS2. I'm very green with Adobe, currently use Flexi so Adobe is very foreign to me. I currently have a hi res image on a white background. I am want to outline the image for use for sign design for layering and want to delete the background and just use the image. I cannot seem to "get the program" to do what I want it to do! Can someone please explain the best way to accomplish this? I also see Flexi has a similar tool, and I am having trouble with the same issue in Flexi. I wondered if the white background is throwing the program, but really it shouldn't matter.
Thanks kindly!
Kristie

[Barry]

There are really probably about 100 ways to delete a background in photoshop, but here are 5 different ways to accomplish the task..

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...lrbps_1jet.htm

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...rbps_2fwks.htm

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...bps_3aleaf.htm

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...bps_4abfly.htm

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...bps_5agirl.htm

[Scott Andraschko]

Thanks for your reply. I tried the above suggestions and could not get the item cut away from the white background. I also have tried this in Flexi without success. Any other suggestions...anyone???? This shouldn't be SO difficult, right? Again, the image I want to trace is on a white background. I cannot seem to aquire just the image after following the above steps. I still have the white with my handles around the square "bitmap" image.
Thanks so much in advance!
Kristie

[eye4clr]

This is a "masking" problem.

There have got to be at least 3-4 ways to mask most situations in Photoshop. I'll mention the most simple one here...

First look for a cute little Magic Wand tool in the tool pallet that is likely on the left side of your screen. Once you've selected this tool, look across the top portion of Photoshop's window for a Tolerance setting. Start off with this number around 20. Your mouse pointer should become a magic wand when you have it over the image. Click on the white space you want to remove. The Magic Wand should select most if not all of the area that is continuously connected. Experiment with this tolernace number to select more of less area.

Ok, you've made a selection of an area, but it isn't the what you want to keep right? It is the stuff you want to drop. With the selection active, pull down the Select menu from the top text pull-downs - choose Inverse. Now you've got your selection.

Seperate this by going to the Layers menu at the top and choose New -> Layer Via Cut. Check out the good work you've done by noticing you have a new layer in the layers pallet that is the image area you want to keep.

In that layers pallet, click the little eye by the layer that has the unwanted area. It should now dissapear and have a checkered, empty background in that area. Pull down the Layers menu from the top and choose to Flatten Image. Save AS A NEW NAME to a file format that prints pretty pictures like TIFF. Don't overwrite your original image. You want to keep it for now to restart this process if you have to. Think of this as casual dating, you don't want to over commit.

That was as simple as I could think to make it. It won't be perfect. There will be scraps of white space left around your image and this gets progressively more compex to remove depending on how perfect you want it to be. If you're unhappy with the results, try adjusting the Tolerance setting you setup early on. Lower values leave more, higher takes more out. With a few basics masking, layering, and brush tool skills you can make the results very good.

Not so tough once you do this process a few times. Just takes some practice. Photoshop is a very complex and powerful program. That's what people say when it's complicated as hell

Get yourself a couple of books to speed up your learning curve. "Classroom in a Book" for your version of Photoshop is a fantastic starting point. After that, get any one of a zillion good books on doing fancy stuff. Gotta get the basics down first.