Remove back ground

[vpkumar]

I have seen many videos of affinity Photo and also of photoshop for removing the background from the picture of a tree. I am still not sure which is the best and most effective way. I have seen may using the blue channel layer and the making the contrast more and then selecting it .

Can some experts here tell me which would be the most effective way in Affinity Photo latest version v2.0.

Thanking you in advance.

 

[GarryP]

The “best” background removal technique will normally depend on what the particular image looks like.

If you can supply an example image, and describe what you consider to be the background (it’s not always obvious), then someone should be able to tell you a good way to do it for that image.

Other techniques may be better/easier for other images.

[vpkumar]

@Garryp  I mean an ordinary tree with lot of branches and leaves. I am attaching a picture. Kindly let me know the best way. I actually want to use the tree in another image. Just one tree is enough. I dont need all of them.

[GarryP]

Thanks for supplying the image.

There are lots of trees in that image; which tree do you want to isolate from the ‘background’?

Personally I wouldn’t bother trying with this image; the process will probably be very fiddly and time-consuming.
Instead I would look for some images of trees that have already been isolated.
Try doing a web search for image tree isolated and see if you can find something suitable.

Having said that, if you are trying to teach yourself how to remove the background from a complex image, you can look for tutorials about isolating an image which contains hair, which will be a similar process.
Try searching the web for image hair cut out tutorial affinity to get some advice on that.

[vpkumar]

Thanks for your suggestions. I am actually trying to teach myself the best way. I have already seen some tutorials on removing the background. they use the channels and then make the selection. I will see some on hair cutouts. In the image i gave I know there are more trees. But actually I am just learning how to cut out a tree with similar branches and leaves. There are more tutorials in photoshop. But the same tools cannot be applied in Affinity Photo V2. Since I am using Affinity Photo latest beta version I am on to it. I saw some latest changes in the version 2 which are there and may help me better in selections.

[GarryP]

As you have seen, some Photoshop tutorials can be modified to be used with Photo but some can’t.
Even if a Photoshop tutorial can be modified there’s a chance that it’s not the best way to do it in Photo.

If you haven’t done much isolation work then I would recommend starting with something much more basic and moving up in complexity as you understand what the various tools do and the results they produce.
By doing so you will understand the basics better and be able to adapt your knowledge to more complex projects more easily.
Trying to ‘jump straight in’ with something like your example image may cause a lot of confusion/frustration and you might want to give up pretty quickly.

P.S. I don’t know why you are using the “latest beta version” because V2.2 was released commercially a little while ago and no betas are newer than that, that I know of. (The betas are for testing only and should not be used for ‘normal’ work as their functionalities may change or even be removed without notice. Always use the latest commercial release which you have access to unless you are doing some user testing.)

[vpkumar]

@Garyp I shall follow your advice. I know selections are a complex subject. Simple selections are easy but to make a perfect selection with difficult backgrounds are very difficult and require great practice Thank you for your candid comments.

P.S. I was using Affinity Photo V 2.2.2005 beta, thinking it will have more features. I am not a tester and am only a hobbyist.  I will switch over to the latest commercial release..

 

[Dan C]

Hi vpkumpar,

A little trick for this type of tricky selection, especially with your selection being very high contrast could work as follows:

1. make a duplicate of your original image.
2. add contrast and curves adjustments to turn push the contrast even further until the trees are isolated.
3. flatten the visible layers so you can make a magic wand selection on the new image
4. manually tidy up the selection
5. use the selection on your original image.

 

How your contrasty version should look:

How the white area selection looks:

Applied to the original layer.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Lee_T said:

A little trick for this type of tricky selection, especially with your selection being very high contrast could work as follows:

In general, that's a good trick to know about but it still won't do much to help select a single tree in a photo like the one posted.

[v_kyr]

33 minutes ago, R C-R said:

but it still won't do much to help select a single tree in a photo like the one posted

I've used that technique a lot in the pasts, aka building a silhouette copy for making selections out of a specific image object. I just removed every/all unwanted parts of the silhoutte and then selected the remaining part (invert sel) in order to get a selection of exactly what I wanted. Then reused that selection on the initial image to get an outcut of the wanted thing.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

I've used that technique a lot in the pasts, aka building a silhouette copy for making selections out of a specific image object.

But how well would that work to get just one tree isolated in a photo like the one in the photo the OP posted above, or any similar one with overlapping objects that all have about the same color?

Like @GarryP said, I think for such things it would be much easier to find or take a better photo to work on.

[v_kyr]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

But how well would that work to get just one tree isolated in a photo like the one in the photo the OP posted above, or any similar one with overlapping objects that all have about the same color?

That's up to you which and how much of a tree should be taken over.

12 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Like @GarryP said, I think for such things it would be much easier to find or take a better photo to work on.

Of course it's easier to just take a single, not with other trees overlapping, tree photo as a starting base instead.

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

That's up to you which and how much of a tree should be taken over.

In the OP's photo, how can you even tell which tree many of the branches are a part of? For me, that involves a lot of guesswork, particularly at the treetops where the branches thin out.

[firstdefence]

A simpler method would be...

1. Duplicate the layer
2. Use a threshold adjustment and adjust the slider a bit, then merge down
3. Select > Select sampled colour... and click on the white area, then press the delete button.

 

[vpkumar]

Thank you @Lee_T, @R C_R, @v_kyr and @firstdefence for so many valuable comments and help. I will be trying ou all the suggestions and working on it. About which tree I can select best, I thought I could just cut that out and use it in my picture. That should not be a problem.

What I have learnt from you all is there are so many innovative ideas to do a job. I guess you all get it from experience. I am 74 and I think a slow learner.

[vpkumar]

On 10/3/2023 at 3:09 PM, Lee_T said:

Hi vpkumpar,

A little trick for this type of tricky selection, especially with your selection being very high contrast could work as follows:

1. make a duplicate of your original image.
2. add contrast and curves adjustments to turn push the contrast even further until the trees are isolated.
3. flatten the visible layers so you can make a magic wand selection on the new image
4. manually tidy up the selection
5. use the selection on your original image.

 

How your contrasty version should look:

How the white area selection looks:

Applied to the original layer.

 

[vpkumar]

Dear Lee_T,

Just a small doubt. In your steps I could not understand the last one . 'Applied to the original layer" How do use the selection on the original layer. The question may look silly. 😒

[iconoclast]

On 10/2/2023 at 7:13 AM, vpkumar said:

@Garryp  I mean an ordinary tree with lot of branches and leaves. I am attaching a picture. Kindly let me know the best way. I actually want to use the tree in another image. Just one tree is enough. I dont need all of them.

Just a tiny annotation from my side: it is not the important point what are the objects that you want to release from the background. The important point is if they have characteristics that distinguish them enough from the background. Characteristics like Hue or Brightness. Often the background and or the objects don't have a continuos Hue and/or Brightness over their complete area, so that the app can't decide which pixels belong to the objects and which to the background, even our eyes seem to be able to do so. In fact our brains do a lot of that decisions, not only the eyes. So maybe AI will one day decide what is are pixels that belong to certain image objects and which don't.

In case of your image, it seems that the Brightness is the most important characteristic. So if the Selection Brush is not effective enough, you could try to increase the contrast between fore- and background with a Live Filter (e.G. "Brightness/Contrast" - increase the contrast and the brightness cautious) and the use the Selection brush. Refine the result. The deactivate the Live Filter (e.G. Contrast/Brightness). Then you have a selection that should surround the trees as good as possibly. Activate a Mask, and the background should dissapear (but of course non destructively - it is still there, you only have to deactivate the mask to get it back).

If there are still unclean parts at the edges, you can remove them by hand. You can paint with black on that parts on the mask. To restore parts that shouldn't be removed, paint with white on the mask. But take care that you do it on the mask, not on the image itself!

[v_kyr]

49 minutes ago, vpkumar said:

'Applied to the original layer" How do use the selection on the original layer. The question may look silly. 😒

If you made any selection (marching ants) it will stay active until you dismiss/delete it ( via Cmd-D/Ctrl-D). So with an active selection from one layer you just activate (select) with the Move tool your other original (background) image layer and the selection will be active (taken over) on/for that one then. - At the end when you performed everything, you then dismiss/delete/remove the selection.

 

 

[vpkumar]

Thank you V_kyr and iconoclast . I have learnt a lot.