Photos for Book

**Hwy101** · 02 September 2006, 11:26 PM

Hi - I am going to do some photos for a Book I am working on -have a little 3.2 digital camera - I want to take the photos of objects and then seperate the subject from the background... should I do a Dark Background (so the constrast between subject & background is more pronounced) to make seperating easier or a lighter background... Thoughts anyone?
(probably being silly -leaning toward dark background- but then eveyone here seems so far advanced of me that I thought I'd ask, incase I am over looking something obvious) Thanks Eveyone - Tom

**Scotty** · 03 September 2006, 01:58 AM

I would suggest a lighter background myself, I play around with extracting from photographs and find that a dark background makes it hard to differntiate from shadows, where as a lighter background simplifies the process. But then it would depend on the subject matter, if it is a bright object. How do you plan to extract these using phot editor or Xtreme? My process is done in PhotoPaintX3 then I copy my object pasting into new file with no backround and creating mask from object and exporting as PNG.
Jim (all round novice)

**Hwy101** · 03 September 2006, 07:51 PM

Thanks Jim for sharing your experience -I hadn't thought of the angle about catching Shadows... (so far, the items I am after are for Illustrating what I am talking about in the Book) I am using serveral programs (PSPro-X, Illustrator, Photo Shop, PSPro X, Xtreme) whatever works to best to Extract -sometimes I have to use a couple of programs to pull 'em out.

I hadn't thought of using a mask and exporting as png... have to give a try.

Again - Appreciate the sharing.

**pauland** · 04 September 2006, 01:38 AM

I use Xara Extreme to mask subjects from the background by using a mask to cut out the subject from the picture. my wife has done the same with CorelDraw (though Xara is better..).

Paul