On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 09:49 +0200, Michael Wagner wrote:

Good morning,

You can find a magic background eraser in Photshop. How do I do this in Gimp? I have version 2.0.4.

What does it do? A lot of people on these lists have not or do not use Photoshop, so you'll need to provide a bit of a description.

Cheers, Malcolm

I use Filter->Color->Color to Alpha

Shit, and I thought Gimp had one up on PS there too. Luckily, I got 3/4th of our marketing department (there's 4 of us) using Gimp because they (and I) didn't think you could cleanly remove backgrounds in PS.

Eric P.

On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 05:52:11PM +1000, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 09:49 +0200, Michael Wagner wrote:

Good morning,

You can find a magic background eraser in Photshop. How do I do this in Gimp? I have version 2.0.4.

What does it do? A lot of people on these lists have not or do not use Photoshop, so you'll need to provide a bit of a description.

Cheers, Malcolm

Actually, it'd be nice if Gimp could pick up some of the properties of PS's erase background tool.

Adding 'Tolerance' to 'color to alpha' would be good start; and maybe that's all that's really necessary for this function.

How does everybody else remove backgrounds?

The other approaches I take are: 1. decomposing the image and a making mask from the layer with the best separation 2. using the path tool to break out a region and (once again) make a mask

Any techniques I'm missing? Eric P.

On Thu, Sep 09, 2004 at 04:32:59AM +0000, Eric Pierce wrote:

I use Filter->Color->Color to Alpha

Shit, and I thought Gimp had one up on PS there too. Luckily, I got 3/4th of our marketing department (there's 4 of us) using Gimp because they (and I) didn't think you could cleanly remove backgrounds in PS.

Eric P.

On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 05:52:11PM +1000, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 09:49 +0200, Michael Wagner wrote:

Good morning,

You can find a magic background eraser in Photshop. How do I do this in Gimp? I have version 2.0.4.

What does it do? A lot of people on these lists have not or do not use Photoshop, so you'll need to provide a bit of a description.

Cheers, Malcolm

Hi,

Eric Pierce wrote:

Actually, it'd be nice if Gimp could pick up some of the properties of PS's erase background tool.

Would you mind describing how this tool works? Some screenshots would be brilliant. I am guessing that it's an erase tool with some kind of edge detection that doesn't delete things not in the same region as the starting seed point - is that accurate?

The other approaches I take are:
1. decomposing the image and a making mask from the layer with the best separation 2. using the path tool to break out a region and (once again) make a mask

Any techniques I'm missing?

I tend to use the magic scissors to make a first attempt at it, create a layer mask from that and retouch the mask to get it right.

Cheers,
Dave.

Hi,

Eric Pierce writes:

Any techniques I'm missing?

Well, I think you missed the most obvious one: Use the paintbrush or any other paint tool in "Color erase" mode. That's probably closest to the tool the original poster was asking about.

Sven

On Thu, Sep 09, 2004 at 08:14:05AM +0200, David Neary wrote:

Hi,

Eric Pierce wrote:

Actually, it'd be nice if Gimp could pick up some of the properties of PS's erase background tool.

Would you mind describing how this tool works? Some screenshots would be brilliant. I am guessing that it's an erase tool with some kind of edge detection that doesn't delete things not in the same region as the starting seed point - is that accurate?

All I know is from a simple search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22background+eraser%22+photoshop&btnG=Google+Search

And about 5 minutes of reading. http://www.basicphotoshop.com/tutz/pstutz33.htm

Eric P.