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AffPhoto’s {Filters > Colors > Erase White Paper} option erases whitish areas as well as the pure white background. Doesn’t “paper” refer to the background?


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I converted a photo with a pure white background to PNG and tried three different ways to to make the background transparent (1. DOCUMENT: transparent, 2. FILTER, COLORS: remove white matter, 3. FILTER, COLORS: erase white paper). The last option was only partly effective: whitish bits of the image were also erased. What am I doing wrong?

Original: Public Domain photo from Pixabay
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Your observation is correct. This is how it works. 

There is no magic (AI supported) function in Affinity apps, depending on you source image you may need manual work to fine-tune the result.

If you can upload an example image we might give some hints which method works best in the specific case.

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The topmost image is the original JPG. The second image is the result of supposedly "ERASing white PAPER" (whatever that means). Part of the offwhite pear flesh also gets erased. I suspect there is some setting to specify "erase pure white only", but maybe I should have painstakingly erased each bit of pure white by hand?

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The Flood Select tool will work better in this instance, use a tolerance setting of 12% and it will catch almost everything but a few small bits underneath the left-hand slice and the enclosed area on the stalk.

I'm not a fan of the Erase white paper (EWP) filter it's not refined enough to be of much use and only really works well in black and white high contrast images. On images like this creating a mask of the areas you don't want to be affected is the way to go so mask out the flesh if you want to use EWP.

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9 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

The Flood Select tool will work better in this instance, use a tolerance setting of 12% and it will catch almost everything but a few small bits underneath the left-hand slice and the enclosed area on the stalk.

I'm not a fan of the Erase white paper (EWP) filter it's not refined enough to be of much use and only really works well in black and white high contrast images. On images like this creating a mask of the areas you don't want to be affected is the way to go so mask out the flesh if you want to use EWP.

I assume 12% is a matter of trial and error (different with each image). Thanks! I'll give it a try.

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1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

I'm not a fan of the Erase white paper (EWP) filter it's not refined enough to be of much use and only really works well in black and white high contrast images.

Just to make a point about the EWP filter, as per the title of this thread! – From the Help File:

"About the Erase White Paper filter

The filter is really useful if want to use line art previously drawn on physical media (paper). After scanning, the areas of scanned white paper can be stripped away by using the filter, allowing colouring and texture to be added to complete the design."

It is actually very useful for doing the one thing that it's intended to do, it isn't intended to be a general purpose background removal tool. 🙂

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14 minutes ago, PaulEC said:
Quote

"The filter is really useful if want to use line art previously drawn on physical media (paper). After scanning, the areas of scanned white paper can be stripped away by using the filter, allowing colouring and texture to be added to complete the design."

It is actually very useful for doing the one thing that it's intended to do, it isn't intended to be a general purpose background removal tool. 

Aha! Now I know what those words really mean. Is removal also possible for scanned 60- and 70-year-old black and comics (with inevitable yellowing) or is it strictly white? Do you think penciled-in colors on those comics could also be removed by tweaking? When it comes to AffPhoto, I'm still a newbie. Thank you for the clarification.

 

🙂

 

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1 hour ago, pagelayoutt said:

I assume 12% is a matter of trial and error (different with each image). Thanks! I'll give it a try.

You could also use the Undo Brush Tool on the pear's flesh to remove the transparency. Done in a minute, but I think this depends on the image.

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An improvement for the Erase White Paper would be the capability to specify an RGB range, like 255,255,255 to 251,251,251

If you take a reading from the background and from the pear flesh, the EWP uses quite a wide range and being able to limit that range would improve the erase target and give some semblance of control.

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1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

An improvement for the Erase White Paper would be the capability to specify an RGB range, like 255,255,255 to 251,251,251

If you take a reading from the background and from the pear flesh, the EWP uses quite a wide range and being able to limit that range would improve the erase target and give some semblance of control.

This can be done with other methods easily, like telemax showed in his reply using blend ranges.

Other options is using procedural texture filters. If someone is interested, a can provide the filter formula.

 

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First simple versions: Using luminosity value for masking (does not check for color)

var c1=rgbtoi(R,G,B); 1-step(a,c1)*step(c1,b)

818294725_Screenshot2022-01-24at13_36_05.thumb.png.48a9b9d84cb7748bb8b0acfa8eb130f3.png

 

 

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A version allowing to enter individual minima for RGB channels as numeric input

1-step(a/255,R)*step(b/255,G)*step(c/255,B)

Screenshot 2022-01-24 at 13.56.38.png

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5 hours ago, firstdefence said:

The Flood Select tool will work better in this instance, use a tolerance setting of 12% and it will catch almost everything but a few small bits underneath the left-hand slice and the enclosed area on the stalk.

Sorry, but I'm an absolute newbie here. I was racking my brains trying to figure out where the flood select tool could possibly be: "Maybe you were using a different version? Maybe there is a synonym on the select menu that I don't understand?" Finally I noticed that FLOOD SELECT is NOT on the select menu at all. It's an icon on the left hand vertical menu!

The dancing ants now appeared around the two bits of pear, but ... "What do I do now? How on earth do I set the tolerance? A message appeared on the bottom of my screen telling me: "Drag to set tolerance and flood select."

But nothing happens! I finally noticed "tolerance" appears at the very top, but selecting 12% doesn't do anything.

When I saved the image (transparency checked), the pure white was still there: no transparency whatsoever. I have no idea what's going on.

Sorry to waste your time. I'll have to plow through tutorial after tutorial to figure out what I'm supposed to do. I'll figure it out eventually. I feel totally out of my depth right now, but thank you for trying to help,

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4 hours ago, joe_l said:

Yes please.

There are more possible options, e.g. using HSL model. You could input a hue (and tolerance), saturation, luminosity as filter criteria.

I have this already implemented and shared, but only as 2 step approach:

  1. convert RGB to HSL
  2. use HSL with additional PT filter to create mask/ selection 
  3. Create mask from result of 2.

it would be possible to combine all these in one step, but it becomes really complex.

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@pagelayoutt

This is a basic video run-through to get you up and running with the Flood select tool...

 

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On 1/25/2022 at 4:14 PM, firstdefence said:

@pagelayoutt

This is a basic video run-through to get you up and running with the Flood select tool...

 

Wow! Thank you for making this video based on my forum question. The eraser adjustment part is a bit tricky, but I'll tinker with the settings until I get it right. The image edges definitely look more professional after the "shine" is removed.

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6 hours ago, pagelayoutt said:

Wow! Thank you for making this video based on my forum question. The eraser adjustment part is a bit tricky, but I'll tinker with the settings until I get it right. The image edges definitely look more professional after the "shine" is removed.

Glad to have helped.

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