To remove back ground in black and white photo

[vpkumar]

I have faced this type of problem many times while trying to remove the background or make a subject selection in a black and white photo. The only way I figure is to guess. But if you experts can suggest a better way I will be grateful.

I am attaching a photo for your reference. The white shirt on the white background is the probelm.

[dominik]

52 minutes ago, vpkumar said:

I have faced this type of problem many times while trying to remove the background or make a subject selection in a black and white photo. The only way I figure is to guess. But if you experts can suggest a better way I will be grateful.

I am attaching a photo for your reference. The white shirt on the white background is the probelm.

Hello @vpkumar,

I would guess even an AI supported mechanism would have problems to detect the border between the background and the white shirt. There simply is no contrast.

Eventually you'll have to mask this with a combination of several techniques.

For the most part a selection brush should detect hair and clothing.

In the area where the shirt is you could look at different channels if there is any contrast between the shirt and the sky. Event though the file seems to be black and white there is a chance that the file itself is in RGB. If you find any contrast try to enhance that with a levels adjustment and use this for an additional selection.

If everything failes you could just draw a vector line where you assume the shoulder of the person is. Then add this as an additional selection to the rest.

d.

PS: I'll give it myself a try and report back.

[dominik]

I gave it a try and try to explain, what I did:

1. There is hardly any contrast in the area of the guy's right shoulder. This is why I a drew a vector curve guessing where the shoulder and arm might be. There is a very faint shadow where his right sleeve might be.
2. I gave this vector shape a 1px stroke and a solid fill to make it visible. Duplicate and rasterize for later combination with the automatic selection.
3. The rest of the two persons I roughly selected with the Selection Brush tool. I manually corrected a little in the area of the woman's left shoulder because there is also too less of contrast.
4. Refine selection of the Selection Brush. There are still some oddities but I left them in for demonstration of the problematic areas.
5. Create mask from selection.
6. Then go back to the pixel layer from #2 and CTRL+click on the layers thumbnail. The hide the layer.
7. Switch to the mask layer created in #5 turn to the Fill Tool. Select black as colour and fill the selection with black.
   This should unreveal the part of the photo that is supposedly the person's right shoulder.

I attach my workfile and the result. Note: it is a rough take but should demonstrate how to combine different techniques. It took me about half an hour.

d.

two-persons.afphoto

[vpkumar]

@dominik I  am amazed by your work. I could not have thought of it. Ofcourse I am a  slow learned at 74. I have checked out your steps and will doing it myself and try to improve  on it. You say you have taken only about half an hour. I  may take at least 2 hours that too with a break. 

I am very thankful to you to have spent your time on it.

VP

[dominik]

37 minutes ago, vpkumar said:

@dominik I  am amazed by your work. I could not have thought of it. Ofcourse I am a  slow learned at 74. I have checked out your steps and will doing it myself and try to improve  on it. You say you have taken only about half an hour. I  may take at least 2 hours that too with a break. 

I am very thankful to you to have spent your time on it.

You are welcome. The time I spent is due the fact that I did not pay too much attetion to detail. In contrary I left some flaws on purpous to demonstrate where the automatic selection lacks details with a photo like that. It all can be fixed with manual tweaks.

d.