Cutting out the background to perfect edges

Thursday 18th November 2010

Don’t be fooled. Yes, white backgrounds are possible with just good lighting. And many AI tools (apps and web services) promise “easy background removal” - but they will quickly disappoint you. But pros use path editing tools to produce perfect antialiased edges. Nothing else comes close. Traditionally done in insight-live.com/glossary/194">Photoshop this is now possible on a smartphone. On the lower left is the original image (already cropped). On the lower right it is open in Exacto, an iOS/Android app (watching the short help animations is a must to learn it). The blue dots are anchors and black ones can pull curves between them. Easy zooming on a smartphone makes the process practical. Exacto exports to Photos with a transparent background. This method makes busy backgrounds a non-issue, lighting can be focussed on how the object looks rather than the delicate balance of white background and a washed-out object.

Pages that reference this post in the Digitalfire Reference Library:

The difference lighting can make in photos, Bit Image

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