Dropping out a background with Photo Tool > Select Colors to Enhance

I've been doing some experiments to see if I can create an effect of shadows on an uneven surface in my stereograms.

Normally I use a black background and the Photo Tool > Select Colors to Enhance feature to select and make the background transparent.

But in this image there was a very dark edge to the beveled letters that was not working. So I added a color that does not appear in the pattern and made that color transparent.

It worked flawlessly.

The attached image has 6 layers with several transparencies.

It sounds like a very creative solution to a well-known problem in removing backgrounds but I can't quite follow the steps.

I noticed that the letters in the left image all have various degrees of deformation but the ones in the right image all seem straight. Or is that an optical illusion?

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I noticed that the letters in the left image all have various degrees of deformation but the ones in the right image all seem straight. Or is that an optical illusion?

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The letters are the same in both. The letters are conforming to the background which is lumpy. The depth image for the characters is the same as for the shadow but a but lighter to make the letters come forward.

Interesting effect.

So, what steps did you take to add the purple and then remove it?

How do you add a background color if you had not already made the original background transparent? I may not be fully understand what you are trying to do.

Ray

Ray better worded my question.

My wife always refers to explanations like this as "talking to the cat."

The objects (text) were added to a solid color rectangle to make the repeating wallpaper texture.

The transparency was applied to the bitmap created with the texture.

Ah, you are saying that the text was not on a background but only had a shadow?

The shadow for the text was a separate stereogram made with a darker version of the background pattern.

The actual text was exported with the lavender background color. Then the lavender color was made transparent with the Select Colors to Enhance and appears over the shadow, which appears over the background pattern.

I've reworked the image since posting yesterday, and I may make more changes before it is done.

Below are some of the steps.

I used a darker version of the background to make the shadow using masks and then applied Bitmap Feathering to soften the shadow.

Then a texture with the text and green background created a stereogram of the text. The background was erased to make the text float above the shadow.

Thanks for the additional explanations.

That's doing my head in at the moment Gary, I can see the effects but can't quite follow your method at present. I'll look at it in more detail tomorrow.

It will be my stereogram tomorrow on eyeTricks. There are a few important missing steps but A) I can't give away all my secrets, and B) these steps are more esoteric.