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I took the picture of a clock and were somehow able to remove the transparent parts. Unfortunately the remaing edges are pixeled and rough. I already tried some repair tools insider Affinity Photo, but did not find a way to smoothen the edges. Any recommendations?

 

Side question: the AFPhoto file is 45 MB in size - is that normal or what causes the big size?

Uhr.pdf

Uhr2.afphoto

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You could try blurring the edge

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6 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

You could try blurring the edge

I tried that already and it ends up with smearing the white pixels around. I guess I must try to remove the pixels one by one manually, as most of the repair tools did not help. Maybe this case is too uncommon for a perfectly suitable repair tool.

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Ok, Just had a go, the image is a bit glossy so difficult to select, you can use the flood select too to get a lot of the white selected, then you need to refine the selection by using quick Mask (Q) on the keyboard, this will show the protected selection as red. With the brush tool selected and a suitable brush size you can now go around the clock and paint the red over any area's that aren't selected properly, Black adds to the red, white removes the red, you can toggle between black and white by pressing the (X) key on the keyboard as you brush area's, once you are happy with the red mask you can press (Q) again to come out of the Quick Mask.

 

You can also resize the brush with the [ and ] keys, [ = smaller brush and ] = larger brush, just carefully go around the edge and tidy the jagged edges.

 

This will be a slow job to select the clock because of the low contrast between the clock and the background, if this is a clock you have photographed I would suggest taking the image again to separate the clock from the background, a good tip is to use black card as a reflected shade that will show on the edges of the glossy gold finish, other than that its having some patience or find the same clock in a better image.

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I've tried adding a filter or two to make selection easier but a lot the detail is washed out, even applying a threshold filter doesn't help so its slow and easy I'm afraid.

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I've found a better image

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6 hours ago, Vince42 said:

I took the picture of a clock and were somehow able to remove the transparent parts. Unfortunately the remaing edges are pixeled and rough. I already tried some repair tools insider Affinity Photo, but did not find a way to smoothen the edges. Any recommendations?

 

For something like that, use the Pen tool.

 

Although firstdefence's better image is obviously better, as a little exercise for myself I cut out your original image using the Pen Tool just to show how much better the Pen works with poorer images rather than making and refining pixel selections. It is just a Pen tool cut-out, no refining or anything. I really like the way Photo works for cutting out images.

 

Better images are obviously not always available. Sometimes you just have to use what you've got.

 

Uhrj.thumb.jpg.40c09d2dcb7d6dabf347680e777ef9db.jpg

 

It could do with a bit of further tweaking but that is easy with the node tool. 

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Can only make a few comments. My skills w. AP are minimal. (I need lots more practice, to say the least)

 

The base problem is that the original image was very compressed, and was full of compression artifacts. Digital garbage. Those made for the chunky edges. I don't know enough about AP to decrease those effectively. I used GIMP quite a lot, and still do, and I couldn't get anything useful from the image. Basically, it was mangled to make it really small. I tried some of my usual routines, and got no where. If I needed to, I would have had to proceed w. very tedious manual erasing.

 

AFAIK, the file size is because AP does not compress anything, and there were 3 large pixel layers. The background hall itself was 15+ Mb uncompressed. Using .jpg compression at 90% quality, it dropped to 3+ Mb.

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11 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Ok, Just had a go, the image is a bit glossy so difficult to select, you can use the flood select too to get a lot of the white selected, then you need to refine the selection by using quick Mask (Q) on the keyboard, this will show the protected selection as red. With the brush tool selected and a suitable brush size you can now go around the clock and paint the red over any area's that aren't selected properly, Black adds to the red, white removes the red, you can toggle between black and white by pressing the (X) key on the keyboard as you brush area's, once you are happy with the red mask you can press (Q) again to come out of the Quick Mask.

 

You can also resize the brush with the [ and ] keys, [ = smaller brush and ] = larger brush, just carefully go around the edge and tidy the jagged edges.

 

This will be a slow job to select the clock because of the low contrast between the clock and the background, if this is a clock you have photographed I would suggest taking the image again to separate the clock from the background, a good tip is to use black card as a reflected shade that will show on the edges of the glossy gold finish, other than that its having some patience or find the same clock in a better image.

I will do that for practicing - I am still stumbling when it comes to pixel manipulation. And it takes quite a while to get to know all the functionalities and to make the right decision when to use which tools - that's why I am asking these stupid questions. ;)

 

11 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Did you create this from the PDF? It looks awesome!

 

@toltec I will also give the "pen tool approach" a try - and hopefully will be able to do the next cut out job in better quality.

@gdenby Thank you for your input!

 

Thank you all! It is awesome how reliable, informative and amazing all you guys are! #LovingAffinity

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Hi Vince42, no, I gave up on the PDF because it was too poor quality, I used the image I've added. I don't flog dead horses o.O but as a technical exercise it was fun to play with, the original image was missing too much detail to get a good selection, the highlights were just blown out (No detail and it merged with the background so that there was no contrast to define a knowable edge) and even if that was possible there would still have been parts missing that would either have had to have been recreated or just left out. It was at that point I went lateral and decided to find the solution not fix the problem. I have put the image on a black background to show the cut out but normally I'd create a nice drop shadow to ground the object to a surface, makes it look more realistic in an environment, Lighting is also important so have a background that reflects the lighting on the object helps to make the object look like it is actually sitting there in a pseudo 3D space.

 

The pen tool is great for selection as it is easily adjustable later on, it has tweakability. I used the flood selection and dropped in Quick Mask (Q) and manipulated the mask with a brush then edited a bit more with feathering the mask and smoothing it. Its sounds like a lot to do but once you get into it it's not. Using the pen tool for selection work is great to hone your Pen Tool skills and once you have got it honed you'll fly around objects.

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Just now, Vince42 said:

I will follow your advice and play around with the images - and I still have the hope to be more experienced in the future the more practice I get. Thank you very much again!

Your welcome, There are some great people on here, always willing to help, there are no daft questions, just remember even experts had to be novices at some point, you'll get it, just practice, if you hit trouble just come here and we'll help. :D

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