Why such poor results with Background Erase?

[Luke.Hart]

Also, Angelise, you got close into the edges exactly as I described!

[Xhris]

There's definitely a knack to getting good results with this tool that experience can hone. I still feel that this tool is too trial-and-error though with its current implementation. Having to undo, retry, and hope you get a good result. It would be more accessible I feel if it you could refine the result in a live way before committing to a final result. Photoshop's refine edge functions pick out hair strands better I feel too, especially as you can alter saturation etc during the process to give a better looking result.

[Gamerprinter]

I don't know, I've only used it a couple times, both with excellent results, though the originals had 300 ppi resolution, perhaps that was the difference. I seldom use photos as-is in my cartography work, more often using photographs as vector image fills - all my shapes used in my work are vector objects. So I have little use for the tool myself, though I indeed see its practical application.

[Contours]

Thanks for all the responses. At least I know that I’m not just missing something.

Regarding magic software, we’ve had features like red eye reduction for years ... and I’ve seen some pretty amazing effects: object remove ... blending ... stitching ... content aware scaling. Even snap to objects surprises me sometimes about what it can “see”. So accurately isolating objects in an outline fashion certainly seemed feasible.

But given the realities of the current Xara feature, I’d like to see it changed it as follows:

• use the current brush method to loosely mark the object and the background
• have the software put up a dashed outline of the object it thinks it sees
• let you adjust the outline in any way that's needed, using the same tools as you would use if you had created the outline

This would let the software accomplish what it can ... and the user easily take care of the more difficult instances. And as the software improved in each new version, the user would do less and less. Plus, it’s a merging of the editing methods.

In the meantime, I’ll go with the mask + outline method for most of my uses.

Thanks, again.

[jaydear]

That's absolutely marvelous, and actually fun angelize! Thanks for that tutorial video. I accidentally found a quick way to trim bits of unintentional eraser and mask painter is to hold down the shift key - the brush gets a minus sign in it and it becomes a deleter.

[Contours]

hold down the shift key - the brush gets a minus sign in it and it becomes a deleter.

That's an excellent tip. It makes it much easier to try a "broadbrush draft" of the process ... then Undo and tune as needed.

Thank you.

[xtom]

Trying to remove grey background from a grey/desaturated image is trickier. I find the more contrast in colour the easier it is and less you have to do. For tricky ones I normally run along as close to the edges as possible and then fill in the rest as much as possible, takes a little more time but still much quicker and handier than tracing all of the edge exactly and usually get very good results. Though that plane nose shape would be pretty quick to just do with the shape tool too.

[Egg Bramhill]

My preferred method is to trace around the shape with the shape tool but occasionally I use the mask/erase background option. On completion of the erase background image I "Create Bitmap Image" transparent png, place a high contrast rectangle below this and then use the eraser tool to further remove unwanted background artifacts.

[Sadler]

I recently discovered that paint.net has an excellent magic wand tool that is good for removing backgrounds from bitmaps. You can interactively adjust the tolerance and the source colour for the best selection then hit delete. It is also quick and easy to do a number of selections for more complicated backgrounds.

Just another option, albeit outside of Xara.

[Gamerprinter]

I recently discovered that paint.net has an excellent magic wand tool that is good for removing backgrounds from bitmaps. You can interactively adjust the tolerance and the source colour for the best selection then hit delete. It is also quick and easy to do a number of selections for more complicated backgrounds.

Just another option, albeit outside of Xara.

Most image editors: Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.net, etc. can do exactly that.