Which selection tool?

[It123]

Hello all, can someone please offer advice on how to cut the TV ariels show in the attached picture and then place them in another image. I am finding it difficult to get an understanding of channels and the pen tools takes for ever.  Any help would be very welcome, thanks

[AffinityJules]

I see that everyone is avoiding this one, can't say I blame them.

This, at best, is tricky, and it all depends on the resolution and quality of the image itself. The one posted here is very small and thus problematic at best.

There is no selection tool that will correctly identify the portions you want to keep without pre-editing.

For something like this, and the time it would take to get a good selection, I personally would resort to cutting out the image with the pen tool. That would be the most accurate, but time consuming method.

But, someone in here might know a far better way than what I suggested.

[Alfred]

I haven't tried this, but given that the antennae are mostly quite dark and the background is mostly quite light it should be possible to produce a good starting point for a mask by applying a Threshold adjustment to a copy of the image.

 

[verysame]

@AffinityJules If you click on the image you'll be able to download the hi-res version.

 

@It123 One way to do this is to use Apply image, but you need to work on two parts of the images separately as the taller antenna has some bright values in it. I'll try to post something later on today, but my advice is to look at the Apply image method, it can be helpful in cases like this.

[firstdefence]

Try Inverting the image and using flood select fill to block select most of the sky, the rest is just tedious tweaking. Also zoom in to get a better selection.

 

Or just go and take a better picture with higher contrast.

[It123]

Thanks to all for your replies.  I have since my post been advised to try the software called Fluid Mask so i’ll try with a free trail.  Thanks again

[verysame]

@It123

Here's something you might want to play with.

 

1. Duplicate the original layer and rasterize it.
2. Go to filter and choose Apply Image
3. Click on "Use Current Layer"
4. Click on Equations

You need to play with the values here. AP uses equations, but I never went through the options, so on this round I did play with it.

This is one of the setups:

With this, you should have a good matte for the top part of your picture.

 

Duplicate your original layer once again and try these settings for the bottom half:

 

You will end up with these two layers:

 

(Top Half)

 

(Bottom Half)

 

To clean the buildings visible through the antenna in the foreground simply use a brush in overlay mode. If you use white, you'll affect the bright values (mid-grey will get brighter than dark-grey, black will barely be affected).

To bring back some of the black areas, use the same brush in overlay mode and use black for the color.

 

I ended up with this in less than 2 min.

 

 

Which, personally, considered the tricky task, is not bad at all for a 2 min. job.

With some finessing, you can get a pretty decent matte.

Hope that helps.

[It123]

Thanks verysame, , a fantastic answer.

[verysame]

2 hours ago, It123 said:

Thanks verysame, , a fantastic answer.

 

You're welcome, hope it will be useful.

 

[AffinityJules]

18 hours ago, verysame said:

@AffinityJules If you click on the image you'll be able to download the hi-res version.

I didn't realise you could do that. I clicked on the image and I got the same size picture, I didn't notice the little box on the bottom left until afterwards.

I'll remember that for next time.

I have to say that your treatment of this picture to get a good selection was something I would never have thought to do. I live and learn.