Basics (Part 1, Continued)
Option B: Isolate Objects By Painting the Background Around Them White
As I said before, there are many ways to achieve the same result in Photoshop. One way to deal with relatively simple isolations is to adjust levels on a new level and to erase the foreground (Option A, discussed earlier). Another way to accomplish a perfect isolation over white (or over any other color, for that matter) is by painting a new background over the existing one. Don't you worry, you don't need to have any drawing skills to do that at all! Let's take a different image and work through this painting process. How about we continue with the holiday theme and look at this little gift box?
So, the first step, again, is to create a new layer above the original layer. This time, however, you are not copying the original level, you are creating a new, transparent level above the original background. You can either press Shihft+Cntrl+L or go to layers->new->layer. Let's name it "transparent level" (rollover the original image above to see a visual tip). Now we are ready to paint away.
Select a relatively large, soft brush, set its color to white (or any desired background color), and paint in the new, transparent level. In my example (see the image on the right) I am using a small hard brush to show you the effect the painting creates. The brush that you should select should be larger and with soft edges (see first part of this tutorial for an explanation). Seems like we are painting right in the original image, howeve, we are painting on the layer above, so don't be afraid to make a stray stroke or two as we can easily erase all the stray strokes with an eraser later, in fact this is a part of the plan anyways, so paint away. Rollover the image to the right for more visual tips (if you need to set the color to white, follow the green tip on rollover: with your "brush tool" selected, double click on the color picker icon, then a new color selection window will pop-up. Just slide the color to the upper left corner, until your RGB values are 255/255/255).
All right, now you should have something that looks like the image to the left (after you have erased all the stray strokes. To get rid of stray strokes, just use the eraser tool set to a soft brush.).It seems like there is still some painting that needs to be done around the bottom of the box and around the golden bow (rollover the image to see what I am talking about).Here is how:
1) zoom the image to at least 100% view (200% or 300% is even better)
2) select a small soft brush (depending on the size of your image, 1 to 15 or 20 pixels; you would need to play around with the size of the brush to find the size that works well with your subject matter. Naturally, your brush library does not have all the sizes listed, what you need to do is select a soft brush, right click, and move the size slider to the left to select the right size).
With a small soft brush selected, carefully paint around the edges of the box and the bow. A good trick when you are painting around straight lines is to hold the "shift" key down: with your brush, click at the starting point of where you want to paint a straight line, then press the SHIFT key down, and while holding the SHIFT key down, click at the end point - where you want the straithg line to end. And remember, you are still painging on the new, transparent layer. Let me go over this step by step (numbers correspond to the numbers to the left):
1) Select a relatively small, soft brush (see #1 in the image), click where you want the straight line to begin
2) Press the SHIFT key and hold it down. Click with your brush tool where you want the straight line to end (see #2 in the image): in this case, I want it to end in the lower corner of the box. as you can see, Photoshop automatically draws a straight line from 1 to 2.
3) Select a slightly larger brush and complete painting the background white. The line that we painted in steps 1 & 2 above serves as a protective "tape" that protects the red of the box while you are painting the background white. Since we used a small soft brush, it also provides for a nice, soft white edge around the box.
After you are done (basically a few rounds of painting with different size small brushes and erasing stray strokes here and there with a soft eraser - especially convenient when painting around the bow, or less straight surfaces), flatten the image, and you are done. Remember, the "hold the shift key down" trick holds for any selection (e.g., lasso, eraser) or painting tool. After you are done with the background you might also want to do contrast, color and other settings to correct the foreground (the box). In the end, you should get something like this:
