cutout image from picture

[boffodude]

What is the best way to separate a person in a picture from the background? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanking you in advance,
Boffodude

[boffodude]

What is the best way to separate a person in a picture from the background? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanking you in advance,
Boffodude

[Mickie]

There are several ways to do this. Ross Macintosh has a nice tutorial in the Xaraxone photo montage tutorial. The choice of how best to do it seems to vary from person to person and project to project. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ...Xara gives you several different choices.

If after you look at Ross's tut, you still have questions come back and ask specifics.

Mickie

[netspotz]

Dear Dude,

I am quite certain that there are those who use Photoshop and will mask the part of the image in question and then just "do it."

However, I suppose you are asking about XARA and here is my "dullard's" way of doing it.

1.) Import the graphic into a clean page. (.tifs work best!)
2.) Draw a rectangle completely around the whole image.
3.) Convert the rectangle to shapes.
4.) Set its line width to nothing.
5.) Convert its color to something which contrasts really well versus the image you wish to keep so you can see it.
6.) Click on the Transparency tool and move the slide button to the right until you can just barely see the rectangle's color properly. Now you can see your image beneath it.
7.) By alternately moving and creating control buttons for the rectangle by using the Shape Editor tool, you can create an outline by stretching/dragging/moving the rectangle around the part of the image you wish to keep.
8.) Once you have an exact "mask," then turn the "rectangle" back to no transparency so it is easier to see and to see if you got it all. If not, then work a little more.
9.) Make sure that the rectangle is on top and selected and then, holding down the Shift key, click on the image in the background. This selects both images. Then click on the "Arrange" menu and select "Combine Shapes" then select its sub-menu "Slice Shapes."
10.) Now, holding down the Ctrl Key with your left little pinky, tap the "x" key with any of the rest of your fingers (or toes) and the part you outlined will disappear and be on the clipboard. Then paste it wherever you like. Or you could have just dragged it to where you want it. Then get rid of the part that is left. Send it to Gary!

The advantage of doing the trick this way is that you are still in XARA and can use this slice of image in another XARA graphic you have prepared and it may as well be an original part of it.

This is probably considered "crude" by the experts (like Gary), but it works and only depends on how many control points you are willing to put in and how careful you are to adjust them. The same method also works really well for copying someone's logo or font and then you still have a vector graphic in which you can adjust its size up or down and still be accurate. Plus you can do all of the other tricks that XARA allows.

Good Luck,
http://www.netspotz.com

[roman]

First is showing the result when using netspotz technique of maiking outline by drawing lines and adjusting the curves (sometimes you don't need to increase contrast) Also you can clone the bitmap and use bitmap effects to play with brightness and contrast on the clone. Then make outline, erase the adjusted clone and INTERSECT the original bitmap with the closed outline.

[roman]

As you can see outline in this picture has far more points (nodes). The smoothing of Freehand tool was adjusted to minimum, but it's good to play with the smoothing slider to find reasonable compromise between the accuracy and number of nodes.

IMO, the results are inferior to the line-tool outlining.

[IKraus]

There are thousands of different ways of doing this, depending on what programs you're talking about doing it with. For the most part, it's rather cumbersome, as you're adjusting the mask/shape/whatever to match the outlines of whatever exactly. Good tips presented here on doing it within Xara too.

Has anyone plunked the money down for any of those PhotoShop plug-ins that are supposed to make something like this a snap? I've gotten ads on them, but I always thought they were rather pricey as I don't have to do something like this too often. If I should, I'd like to know which ones are worth the $$$!

Push yourself to notice the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Irene M. Kraus
www.design-comp.com