Delete white background

[Patrick Lindner]

Dear all,

I have a picture with several food ingredients on a white background. I want to delete the white background to add a wodden plank beneath. I cannot find a proper way to delete the white background, because there are also for example herbs on it - that means several small spaces remain between the herbs.

Neither the selection tool, nor the filter tools give satisfying results.

Do you have any idea how to solve this issue without spending hours to manually select all the background? (I have 6 more photos like this)

Thank you and best regards,

Patrick

Edited January 17, 2021 by Patrick Lindner

[Gnobelix]

2 hours ago, Patrick Lindner said:

Dear all,

I have a picture with several food ingredients on a white background. I want to delete the white background to add a wodden plank beneath. I cannot find a proper way to delete the white background, because there are also for example herbs on it - that means several small spaces remain between the herbs.

Neither the selection tool, nor the filter tools give satisfying results.

Do you have any idea how to solve this issue without spending hours to manually select all the background? (I have 6 more photos like this)

Thank you and best regards,

Patrick

Hello Patrick,
Welcome to this forum.
One possibility would be as follows,
Open the Image and  duplicate the Image (I always duplicate the layer to be processed)
New adjustment Layer Brightness / Contrast and increase the brightness.
Next Step: Filter - Colurs - Erase White Paper.
The Layer  Brightness / Contrast can be deleted or deselect.

I hope it helps.
Cheers

Tomatoe-2.afphoto

[Patrick Lindner]

1 hour ago, Gnobelix said:

Hello Patrick,
Welcome to this forum.
One possibility would be as follows,
Open the Image and  duplicate the Image (I always duplicate the layer to be processed)
New adjustment Layer Brightness / Contrast and increase the brightness.
Next Step: Filter - Colurs - Erase White Paper.
The Layer  Brightness / Contrast can be deleted or deselect.

I hope it helps.
Cheers

Tomatoe-2.afphoto 44.53 MB · 0 downloads

Thanks very much for your answer Gnobelix! I tried this before. The problem is, that all whites seem to be deleted. The bread and all other ingredients are getting partly transparent by this move. When I transfer this picture to Affinity Designer and put a layer underneath, the layer will be visible through the ingredients of the picture.

I saw the same issue in the file you uploaded - you can see it clearly when you check the tomatoes or the bread.

Best regards,

Patrick

[firstdefence]

One of the issues with this image is the "shadow" around all the items, so the white is not uniform. The remove white paper is not a good filter as it has no control, it's a job lot filter. The only way to control its one size fits all approach is to make selections.

You could try duplicating the image and adding a black and white adjustment filter to get the white "whiter" and everything else black, there will still need to be some fine tuning but it's a start. You can go a step further and add a threshold filter so everything is either black or white, this filter removes the problem areas on the right. All of this would need some fine tuning but it can quickly get a semi decent result

Once you have things as black as possible you can use the erase white paper filter and then use Mask to below.

You can also add a drop shadow to define the items a bit more.

To remove the light halo you can use the healing brush tool. Select a small area of the object you want to de-halo and make short strokes around the object.

Think I've found an easier way to de-halo a lot of the items, I feel a video coming on lol!

The video below supersedes this post.

[firstdefence]

There you go @Patrick Lindner hopefully this will get you further in your quest for selection nirvana...

 

[Patrick Lindner]

5 hours ago, firstdefence said:

There you go @Patrick Lindner hopefully this will get you further in your quest for selection nirvana...

 

It is not just the subtle and precise voice of a documentary narrator you inherent, but also the sharp and distinct mind of a genius! Thank you so much Dex, I couldn't dream of a better support on this issue :)

Best regards,

Patrick