Meet "The Background Eraser" Tool

[K]

This is a thread about the Background Eraser tool.

You've probably never used the background eraser tool, and to be honest, I've been using photoshop for many years, I rarely ever touch it. The thing about the background eraser tool is that, usually, there are better ways to achieve the same effect. However, once in a blue moon.. the background eraser tool will be just the tool you need, and I'm guessing most of you don't know it's there.

If this thread helps a few people, I might write up some more.

So ladies and gentlemen, strap yourself in.. and we shall explore the wonderful world of the background eraser.

Now, my boss approached me a little while ago. She gave me a JPG like the one below, only a lot more complicated. I've simplified it for the sake of the thread.

She told me to change the background from white to a pale blue. And to do it quickly.

Now, without the background eraser tool, I would have a few options; Magic Wand Tool, Magnetic Lassoo, Color Range and Manual Extraction.

I considered all of those options, but vetoed them all for different reasons. I assume you know how to use all of those already (Except possibly colour range), but just in case...

Magic Wand selects every part of the image similar to a colour you select. The way photoshop decides exactly how similarly it should select is based on what tolerance you specifiy. So I could specify a tolerance of one, and it would only select pixels EXACTLY the same as the white background, and hit delete. which would leave me with this....

(I've darkened the background colour in these examples to show off the bad jaggies a little)

Or a really high tolerance, which would leave me with this...

I've been trying now to find a happy medium, but there is no tolerance that would give me nice edges, and not remove the chair.

So no to the magic wand tool.

Next choice, Magnetic Lassoo tool.

The magnetic lassoo tool would probably do a pretty good job on the chair, with some tweaking.. but then I'd have to re type all the text. No thank you.

for reference, this is how the magnetic lassoo tool did..

Not good at all actually... would have required lots of manual tweaking, as well as resetting type.

Colour Range...

Colour range is like a super version of the magic wand tool, allowing you to select various tolerances and multiple colours. It's well clever, though not really suitable for this task as it either left me with super jaggies...

Or ghost chair..

Now, I freely admit that I didn't spend very long tweaking the settings on those. I'm sure I could do a much better job if I invested a lot of time in them, and the best way to do it would have been a manual extraction with the pen tool, and then to reset the type. Only I didn't have much time, I couldn't be arsed, and resetting the type means I would have to send the artwork through the reading department to make sure I dun speled gud.

So.. the background eraser tool.

in case you don't know where to find it, it's hiding behind the regular eraser tool. Click and hold until it appears, or press shift+e until it scrolls through to it. (It's the one with scissors)

The options bar for this tool looks something like this...

From left to right, the first one is tool presets. You can store options there and it saves you having to load them each time. Not really appropriate for this tool so don't worry.

Next one is brush size, hardness (A high number will be a perfect, hard circle, a low number will be all soft and cloud like) and spacing (How long after the initial click it takes for the second erase to occur.. for reference see the below picture, the top line is with low spacing, second "line" is with very high)

The next three buttons are the main options for this tool. You can only select one. The first is continuous sampling, this erases everything. The second is single point sampling. This is the option we want. The third is background sampling, it selects based on the colour of your background swatch (Ie your secondary colour).

The tolerance is the same as it always is, how fussy do you want photoshop to be?

And finally if you click "Protect Foreground Color" it will completely ignore any instance of your foreground swatch (Your primary colour) and leave it in tact.

Using the tool is painfully simple. Click and hold so that the crosshairs touch a pixel of the colour you wish to erase (The background), and then drag the brush around to actually do it.

For the task I initially used a very large brush with a low tolerance to get rid of the pure white background. Then I went over the edges of the chairs, and washed the text with a smaller brush with a slightly higher tolerance. This left me with...

(I forgot to save one with the exmaple background, the jaggies are still there, but not nearly as obvious as they are with other tools)

Now, this tool is not brilliant. It doesn't think very much and is very neanderthal in the way it works, and it is always better to do a manual extraction. However sometimes, you need something between the quick and dirty of the magic wand tool (Actually, something else you might not know, the third Eraser tool "Magic Eraser" combines the magic wand tool with the delete key, click and boom, all gone. The more you know.) and the long winded precision of a proper extraction.

I hope I've helped to add another tool to your photoshop arsenal. I may flesh this post out a bit, and I'll answer any questions you may have. Let me know if you found this useful, it might encourage me to type up some more.

[Docpepper]

Bravo!! love it and now I want more lol seriously great write up. Just a tip. you probably already know this.

When i use the background eraser tool i do so a duplicate of the original layer. After doing the bg eraser ctrl click the layer to make a selection. Duplicate the background layer once more and add a layer mask. now you can fine tune the extraction.

[The Mask of Norro]

Nice tutorial Keith, definitely should help a few folks.

Though, I encourage everyone to practice with masking and Photoshop's pen tool. Mastering a quick hand with the pen tool can allow you to cut through pictures at an incredible speed. I'm generally able to cut out a person from a rather large picture with a pen tool in under ten minutes now, mostly because of the flexibility of the tool.

In an instance like that, personally, I might have cut the objects out and then utilized the background eraser to preserve the text. Though that's just in your example picture, I'm sure what you were given was loads more complicated.

[Docpepper]

Nice tutorial Keith, definitely should help a few folks.

Though, I encourage everyone to practice with masking and Photoshop's pen tool. Mastering a quick hand with the pen tool can allow you to cut through pictures at an incredible speed. I'm generally able to cut out a person from a rather large picture with a pen tool in under ten minutes now, mostly because of the flexibility of the tool.

In an instance like that, personally, I might have cut the objects out and then utilized the background eraser to preserve the text. Though that's just in your example picture, I'm sure what you were given was loads more complicated.

hehe i've said it plenty times but I hate the photoshop pen tool lol I've actually opened images in illustrator used the pen tool to outline them then impprt the paths into photoshop lmao

[Ignition]

thank you very much for this

I also find the pen tool in photoshop a pain in the ass, mainly because of creating the points and then the lines that come off of it, making it seem smooth is sometimes a bitch and it just gets frustrating. However I do use it as it's a great tool.

Edited September 18, 2008 by Ignition

[Guest studionfc]

Why not just use a multiply layer and color over the text and use the polygonal lasso tool (as opposed to the ever craptastic magnetic one) along the edges of the furniture?

[Ignition]

that wouls be similar to the way I'd do it too Studio - I'd probably use a mask, but it's similar.

However, this seems to be a very very quick way of doing something. So it's just for those quick changes i guess.

[The Mask of Norro]

Someday I'll put together a Photoshop Pen Tool tutorial for you people. It's incredibly useful and easy to get a hold of if you know how to use Illustrator's pen tool.

That being said, I certainly prefer CS3's Pen Tool to CS2's.

[Ignition]

well i'm all for using it. I just can't seem to draw things THAT well with it, maybe i need to zoom in and draw more precisely? I can make blocky objects, but when it comes to more designer arty stuff like a cool anime face for a logo or something, i can't do it.

[The Mask of Norro]

No use drawing much with the pen tool in Photoshop-- well, I mean, there IS use... it's excellent as a vectorart tool, but I've found it helps more for cutting things out then anything else does. Closest thing to the pen tool in terms of usefulness for me is the Polygonal Lasso tool, but even that you have to be careful with sharp corners, since the lines don't bend.

The pen tool is, for me, like the ultimate cutting tool in Photoshop.

[Ignition]

I either use the erasor tool or a mask and then brush personally.

And cool, you'll have to show me how to use the pen tool well for cutting.

[K]

Pen tool is the only way to cut tbh

[Docpepper]

I wouldn't mind a good primer on Photoshops pen tool as well.. Personally i stick to masks for cutting but anything to save time without degrading quality is always good