Help cleaning up edges after deleting background

[HealingDoodle]

I'm pretty new and am beginning to create artwork for t-shirts. But I'm actually scanning in hand-drawn pen and ink artwork and then cleaning it up in Affinity Photo. I can get rid of the background with the selection tool, but realized today that there are remnants left on the edges and am not sure how to clean this up. I don't need it to be completely crisp and clean. But these light remnants look awful when the artwork is on a colored background.

I've attached three screenshots:

1. Edges.jpg shows the "halo" around the edges. I want to eliminate the light color on the outer and inner edges (not the gold fill inside).

2. & 3. Edges2.jpg and Edges3.jpg show examples clearly with black and red ink and the remnants.

Can you please tell me how to fix this?

Thanks for your help.

Susan

 

[Old Bruce]

You should feather the edges of the selection before cutting the background out. It is in the Selection menu. Select > Feather...

[HealingDoodle]

Wouldn't that just give a blurred effect? Thanks for your help.

[ianrb]

1 minute ago, HealingDoodle said:

Wouldn't that just give a blurred effect? Thanks for your help.

It does if too strong -- smooth is another option . Feathering/smoothing amount will depend on the image size 
However; I feel you are looking at the screen image FAR larger than will be in really life.  We can always see our adjustment 'only' because we made them. 
It's very easy to be too fuzzy and critical of our selection -- this video show how "loose" we can be with selections and refine is not always the magic it is said to be .
click here . I realize your selects needs to be sharper, but  maybe not as sharp as you think   

[HealingDoodle]

Thanks. That video was so complex to me! But interesting to see how he drilled down in his selection. 

So I had selected the background and deleted that rather than selecting what I want to keep and making a layer. Maybe I just need to play w the selection settings to get more of the white edges. 

I do know what you mean. It looks OK on the t-shirt but then I saw flecks of white on the black shirt that looked unprofessional to me. 

I appreciate the help. 

Susan 

[ianrb]

forgot about this one -- Grow/shrink Selection in the selection column . That will trim off the little white flecks 
works very well on the stuff I do 

[firstdefence]

Feathering and smoothing are about making a subtle transition from the object to the background you wish to place it on.
You can tweak the edges after you have deleted the background by ⌘ + Clicking on the layer (Ctrl + click on Windows) to make a selection, then shrink the selection by a pixel or two, then process the edge by using dodge (Lighten) or Burn (Darken), Erase, Colour, Smudge or Blur on the exposed edges.

[Medical Officer Bones]

With shirt illustrations semi-transparency may not work as expected - and not supported with screen printing, as far as I am aware. It's better to work with halftones (convert your transparencies/transparent gradients), although direct to garment printing (DTG) is much less limited in this regard compared to screen printing.

But even with DTG the transparency effect may look completely off when coloured transparencies are used on non-white textiles - white and black aren't that problematic. But even those could turn out different than expected depending. It is still considered good/preferred practice to convert your transparent values and gradients to halftones for the best result, no matter the printing method.

Anyway, it means that for textile printing soft subtle transitions at edges between artwork and textile are rather unwanted, and sharp selections are preferred.

[HealingDoodle]

 

16 hours ago, ianrb said:

forgot about this one -- Grow/shrink Selection in the selection column . That will trim off the little white flecks 
works very well on the stuff I do  

Hi Ianrb, I can't figure out how to grow/shrink the selection. Can you please give me a bit more instruction? Could you possibly include a screen shot?

Thanks,

Susan

[ianrb]

This SS may help -- it's all easy once you know it
make your selection >selection >grow/shrink (top of bottom group)>move the slider to suit --- can also put the cursor over the values to adjust with the mouse wheel  
The amount of adjustment will depend on the file size 
save your selection often 
CLICK HERE
questions welcome 

[HealingDoodle]

Ianrb - Wow! I think that might work perfectly for me! :-) Thank you so much. But I want to experiment a bit more. I don't need it to look perfect, since it's artwork, but less of the background is great. I really appreciate it. This is a solution I can understand with my limited knowledge! Susan

[ianrb]

you're welcome Susan

[HealingDoodle]

Hi ianrb,

Well, it's not working out as I'd like. In theory, it's perfect, but it's making each letter look too ragged when I grow or shrink the selection. I may try to zoom in really really close and try to delete the bits left behind. Or I may have to create a vector out of it and lose the hand-drawn quality and colors.

Thank you again for your help,

Susan

[ianrb]

perhaps the "smooth" slider will soften the edge  

Did a quick test -- easy to see (I hope) which has had smooth applied -- RHS 50px 

[HealingDoodle]

Hi ianrb,

Can you please screenshot the steps to get your result? I can't find the slider or the RHS. I see a smooth slider in the Refine menu and it says 50 there. This continues to look like the simplest best solution. Thanks for your ongoing help. Susan

[firstdefence]

@HealingDoodle RHS I think stands for "Right-Hand Side" and 50px would place the smooth slider over on the right-hand side.

[HealingDoodle]

Ah, that makes sense. So I set the smooth slider to 50px. That did work, but the edges are still too light (like an uneven halo). I think now I'm seeing that I have to work on darkening the edges (dodge or hard light) or overwriting them with the pen tool. Thanks again.

[firstdefence]

4 minutes ago, HealingDoodle said:

Ah, that makes sense. But I still don't see how to set the smooth slider to 50px, it's a percentage. ianrb, did you mean 50px? Thanks

The smooth and feather sliders are whatever unit of measurement you have selected, invariably it will say 0px if you have Pixels set as a unit of measurement, Ian quotes 50px

You can change the unit of measurement quickly by selecting the hand tool and changing the unit from the context menu.

[HealingDoodle]

Thanks! I appreciate the screen shot. But I edited my comment because I realized that it's still got that uneven halo and I can't really eliminate much more. I think I'm going to use the pen tool to make it more vector-like and just leave the color showing in the middle.

Thanks again for all the help.

[firstdefence]

53 minutes ago, HealingDoodle said:

Thanks! I appreciate the screen shot. But I edited my comment because I realized that it's still got that uneven halo and I can't really eliminate much more. I think I'm going to use the pen tool to make it more vector-like and just leave the color showing in the middle.

Thanks again for all the help.

If you make a selection with the pen tool, you can create two curves, one for the outer edge and one for the inner, you can then select Both curves and boolean subtract the inner curve from the outer curve, now fill that resultant curve with a colour and you can CMD + Click on on the resultant curve layer to create a selection. 

 

[HealingDoodle]

That is just fabulous, first defence. I wanted to keep the hand-drawn look, but I have tried this and at least this will keep the color in the middle. I'd love to keep it as it originally was, but I think this will be a better option for tee-shirts.

Thank you for taking the time to do this.

Susan

[HealingDoodle]

Hi firstdefence,

I think I'm getting there. But I'm struggling with the guides to measure that the pen strokes are straight and things are even. Should this be posted as a new question or can you help me with that here? I don't think it has to be perfect, as it may contribute to making it look hand-drawn. But it would be nice to be able to work with the nodes to make the thickness the same on both sides of the A. Thanks!

[ianrb]

I would have given up and smashed the computer by now !! 

[firstdefence]

3 hours ago, ianrb said:

I would have given up and smashed the computer by now !! 

lol!

 

15 hours ago, HealingDoodle said:

Hi firstdefence,

I think I'm getting there. But I'm struggling with the guides to measure that the pen strokes are straight and things are even. Should this be posted as a new question or can you help me with that here? I don't think it has to be perfect, as it may contribute to making it look hand-drawn. But it would be nice to be able to work with the nodes to make the thickness the same on both sides of the A. Thanks!

Yes I'm sure I can help, a little tip is to make a small rectangle the width you want and use that as a kind of guide, you can rotate the rectangle to match the side angles and adjust the guides accordingly.

I could probably make a quick vid if I had the file or a sample of it to work out a howto.

[toltec]

3 hours ago, ianrb said:

I would have given up and smashed the computer by now !! 

My ex wife always used to say that women had more patience than men.

Then she lost patience with me and left