Digital Focus: Eliminate Ugly Backgrounds

Give your portraits a sharp, snappy background.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Remove Annoying Backgrounds From Your Portraits

I'm a sucker for stark, white backgrounds. You know what I'm talking about: photos that look like they were taken in the entryway to one of Steven Spielberg's spaceships. They're cool because these photos really draw attention to the subject, since there's essentially no background at all to distract the viewer.

Pure white backgrounds work nicely with portraits. Imagine you've taken a picture of someone, and you like it a lot--except the background is ugly, cluttered, and distracting. If you cut the subject out of the original picture and paste it into a blank, white image, you can breathe new life into your photo; it might even look good enough to frame. Let's give it a try.

Start With a Blank Slate

Start by opening a cluttered portrait in your favorite image editor (for this example I'll use Jasc's Paint Shop Pro). You can work with one of my pictures if you'd like.

The first order of business is to create a new image that has about the same dimensions as the portrait. Make sure the picture is selected and then choose Image, Image Information from the menu. Note the dimensions of your image, in pixels, then close the Current Image Information dialog box.

Now choose File, New and create a blank image with those same dimensions. Enter the Width and Height, then make sure that the Background color is set to White. Click OK. You'll see a blank white image in a new window, which you can minimize until we need it later.

Clip Out the Image

Now bring the portrait to the forefront again and select the Freehand tool from the toolbar (it looks like a lasso). Right-click it to bring up the Tool Options dialog box. Set the Selection type to Smart Edge. The Smart Edge mode does a pretty good job of automatically following edges when we trace around the picture, and that will make our job a lot easier.

With the Smart Edge mode selected, it's time to trace. Click on an edge of the person in your portrait, move the mouse a short distance along the edge ("lassoing" the edge you want to follow), and click again. Notice that a dotted rectangle appears after the first click, and it turns into a line after the second click. As you click your way around the picture, the Smart Edge tool will look for the outline of your subject and lock on. When you make your way all the way around the picture, double-click to finish the selection. If you make a mistake and want to start over, right-click on your image to restart your selection from the beginning.

Feather Your Portrait

The selection job won't be perfect; there are bound to be some rough edges. To disguise the rough spots and add a soft boundary around your picture, you might want to use the feather tool--but it's a matter of taste, and sometimes your picture will look better without it. I'll show you how to use it here, and you can decide for yourself.

Choose Selections, Modify, Feather and enter a small number of pixels. For the 640-by-480 image in this example, you'll want to choose about 2 pixels and click OK. If you're working with a larger image, you may need a bit more feathering (such as 3 or 4 pixels) to get the same effect.

Paste It In

Now it's show time. Choose Edit, Copy and then select the blank canvas we created earlier. Choose Edit, Paste, As New Selection and position the portrait properly in the frame. Save your picture; it's done!

Dave's Favorites: A Digital Camera for Your PDA

If you carry your PDA everywhere, it might make a good in-a-pinch kind of camera--you know, for taking pictures of aliens abducting your prize cow, Elvis behind the checkout counter at the local gas station, or to prove that you really did go on a blind date with someone from Hollywood Squares. Veo has released a pair of cameras for just that sort of thing: one for Palm OS devices and another for Pocket PCs.

The Veo Photo Traveler for Palm Handhelds is a tiny digital camera built onto a Secure Digital card; it fits in any Palm OS device with a Secure Digital slot, like an M515, i705, Tungsten T, or Treo 90. The Photo Traveler for Pocket PC is based on a CompactFlash card and is a bit more finicky. It will work with Hewlett-Packard's IPaq 36xx, 38xx, and 39xx, and Toshiba's e570 and e740, but no other Pocket PCs--whether the device has a built-in Compact Flash slot or not. Weird.

Both cameras capture VGA-quality images and use a manual focus lens to let you capture anything from very close macro shots (from as little as an inch or two away) to infinity. The Pocket PC version also captures AVI movies with or without sound.

As image quality goes, the Photo Traveler is just so-so. But these cameras are about spontaneity and fun, not winning a Pulitzer. They cost $99 from Veo's Web site, but we were able to find prices as low as $78 at the PCWorld.com Product Finder.

Q&A: My Pictures Look Green!

Using my digital camera, I've had some trouble with certain kinds of photos. Some of the low-light shots I take (at night and indoors) have a green tint, and night shots are the worst. I have chalked this up to a poor flash, but some of the outdoor shots I take in bright sunshine have this same greenish tint too. Any ideas on how to get rid of it?

--Scott Werling, New York, New York

Some digital cameras--especially older and cheaper ones--simply have terrible color accuracy. You may be a victim of one of those iffy cameras. If that's the case, there's little you can do except to try to fix each photo afterwards in a program like Adobe PhotoShop.

But it's also possible that the problem is fixable. It sounds to me like the camera's white balance is totally out of whack. The white balance control tells your camera how to calibrate the colors that the sensors see. Different lighting conditions can have a big effect on this. Most digital cameras have a white balance adjustment--check your user guide to see how to operate it.

My first guess would be that you accidentally locked the camera into an oddball white balance setting like one for tungsten lighting that will tend to discolor every shot you take. Check for that. If that's not the case, then your camera does a poor job of regulating its own white balance, and you'll need to set it manually before each shooting session. To do that, use one of the presets or carry a sheet of white paper and use it to set the white balance whenever lighting conditions change.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This week's Hot Pic: "Flyin' Free," by Ross Heeren, Juniata, Nebraska

Ross says that a thunderstorm was approaching, which created a very interesting sky. He took out his digital camera and started taking photos of his oldest son on the swing. "I then played with color, brightness, and contrast in elements till I liked what I saw," says Ross.

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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