I'm starting one of my business New Year's Resolutions early. I'm trying to improve my photo backgrounds on photos that I post for my Studio Marcy Etsy shop.I've gone through the phase of the colored backgrounds, and the gray backgrounds and now I'm on the "white" backgrounds. My artistic concession is to sometimes keep a bit of the shadow, while I white out the rest of it. You can see my mermaid beaded ink pens with two whiter backgrounds and one original. Quite a difference, isn't it?
Of course it would help if my original photos were better and I will work on those too. But for right now, Photoshop Elements 4.0 and its Magic Wand Tool is my new BF.
If you've got a Photoshop trick for improving photos, please feel free to post it in the comments section. I think we can always use some helpful hints and new ways to do things.
I've got Photoshop Elements, but I don't know how to use the wand tool. Any quick tips?
ReplyDeleteWish I could help. I use Picassa. Oh, well, Happy New Year, and I love the pen.
ReplyDeleteHi Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteI am not an expert, but here's what I do. I click on the magic wand and then choose a spot on the photo near bead. Then while holding down my shift key, (I'm on a Mac), I click again and it makes the size larger, until I've clicked all the way around the bead and have isolated it from the background. Then I click on "edit" and go to fill selection and make sure "white" is there. Click on that and then change any little bits to white- with an eraser or stamp too.
Convo me and I can walk you through it better after you take an old photo and try it.
Let me know,
Marcy
Hi Marcy. Here's a blog post I wrote about my photo set-up journey:
ReplyDeletehttp://lorigreenberg.com/blog/?p=255
And also a link to an article that I wrote that includes how to use Photoshop Elements to remove the background and leave only pristine whiteness!
http://artbeadscene.blogspot.com/2007/03/tutorial-photographing-beads-and.html
Hope some of it might help!