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having trouble selecting green from an orangish background; there must be a quick easy way


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Hi all - I feel like this should be very easy.  I am having trouble selecting just my ferns ... I've tried the various selection methods and in every case I am getting a lot of the orange-ish sheet behind the ferns.  I've tried the flood select (on the sheet and ferns) with and without contiguous and various levels of tolerance.  Ive tried the select color range and select sampled color (on both the sheet and ferns).  I thought that putting green ferns on an orangey sheet would make selection of the ferns simple and easy, almost one step.  Instead I am finding separation very difficult.  The selection brush seems to do OK but a lot of manual work.  Why can't I simply select GREEN and just get the ferns.  The sheet really is orangeish although it shows more beige here.

How can I easily do this, what am I missing?

Is there a better choice of sheet for the background?

Capture.JPG

Capture1.JPG

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The auto-Color Sample Selection isn't ideally for this image. Some colours are quite similar, in particular directly under the plant where the shadow is influenced by the green. Probably a Pink background would work better because both, green and beige, have quite a few yellow in common in the light areas. This is also caused by the low resolution which obviously matters here a lot because the leaves don't have clear edges but appear to melt blurry with the background. Additionally the light is rather low which influences the differences between colours: in low light they turn to a common gray.

1434907465_greenbeigeselection1.thumb.jpg.08431d5b36e8fadfdbdeb6f8eb9f90e4.jpg

1900612839_greenbeigeselection2.thumb.jpg.d616ac24c00bbb09a5dcf7a0775d4c72.jpg

However, the Color Sample Selection depends a lot on the picking spot. For better isolation the selection brush / refine might work better, as @iconoclast mentioned. But if you need it on clean white then I personally would take new photo with more light (not direct, to avoid shadows) and a more neutral background (respectively a background colour opposite to the object which should get isolated). Ideally the leaves would be placed on a light desk to make the background disappear 'as light'.

2032129962_greenbeigeselection3.thumb.jpg.aa5f479e11e52dd227a1ceb72a8fc5b9.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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On 8/17/2022 at 9:27 PM, jw432 said:

Hi all - I feel like this should be very easy.  I am having trouble selecting just my ferns ... I've tried the various selection methods and in every case I am getting a lot of the orange-ish sheet behind the ferns.  I've tried the flood select (on the sheet and ferns) with and without contiguous and various levels of tolerance.  Ive tried the select color range and select sampled color (on both the sheet and ferns).  I thought that putting green ferns on an orangey sheet would make selection of the ferns simple and easy, almost one step.  Instead I am finding separation very difficult.  The selection brush seems to do OK but a lot of manual work.  Why can't I simply select GREEN and just get the ferns.  The sheet really is orangeish although it shows more beige here.

How can I easily do this, what am I missing?

Is there a better choice of sheet for the background?

Capture.JPG

Capture1.JPG

In future using a white sheet of paper will make selections and separations a whole lot easier

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Hi @jw432

On 8/17/2022 at 9:27 PM, jw432 said:

I've tried the various selection methods and in every case I am getting a lot of the orange-ish sheet behind the ferns.

This would normally be the best way. But in this case I think it would be better, instead of trying to select the ferns, to try to remove the background.

First convert to Lab (Document > Convert Format / ICC Profile > Lab/16)
Next open Blend Ranges (Cog wheel in layers tab) and apply this settings just to the a channel.

Laab.jpg.4b41bd4eea08557eb1cf9057731f58f1.jpg

Finally export as a PNG.

You specifically asked for an easy method. I dont know if I managed to do that in particular because my solution requires working in Lab but this is the best I can do with the minimum amount of steps.

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