advice / suggestion on a project

windoze

there is a project i want to do with the children i teach over the summer. i need to figure out the "easiest" way for the children to be able to complete the task. keep in mind i teach children who are easily frustrated.
i want them to be able to take a picture of themselves, be able to "cut" the picture of them ( remove background ) out from the background and then place that picture into an image say from a travel guide (on the internet). so where do i need help? what is the easiest way to "cut out / isolate " their picture from the background - what program???
in our school we only have emacs and limited to as what software we can buy...
remember.. its has to be easy enough for them to take out their picture from the bqckground with little frustration.
thanx in advance,

troy

gus

Come on troy, your amongst friends here...you dont need to beat about the bush with the smoke screen. Your wanting to join a dating agency & you need a pic of yourself on a dozer or something cool like that ...right ?

windoze

gus wrote:

Come on troy, your amongst friends here...you dont need to beat about the bush with the smoke screen. Your wanting to join a dating agency & you need a pic of yourself on a dozer or something cool like that ...right ?

lol, not quite....

two things ive never been able to do ( and I know they are simple ):
(1) easily remove parts from an image without painstaking attention to detail
(2) selective coloring ( when you have a bw picture and only a specific piece is in its original color )


but thanx for the suggestion!!!


troy

Duffy Pratt

The easiest way to get a cut out is to shoot them against a uniform background that will give you the best contrast you can get. The best for this are probably white, green or blue. Whatever you pick, try to make sure that the children do not wear clothes that are the same color or tone as the background.

Once you have done this, you pick the channel that has the best contrast. (Remember you have 10 channels to choose from: RGB, CMYK, and LAB. You can then apply levels to that channel, or apply image/multiply to the channel to further increase the contrast you have until you have pure black and white. Voila, you now have a layer mask that you can use for the cut-out.

Hope this helps.

Duffy

Art Scott

For the inexpensive software....Photoshop Elements would be perfect....I think.

windoze

Art Scott wrote:

For the inexpensive software....Photoshop Elements would be perfect....I think.

thats the recommended program to use for me, but im not sure how to use the program to do what i want...

im so anti RTFM that I never learn anything..


troy

Pam7

I have a little experience with working with kids that get easily frustrated. So I'm guessing that you want something with as few steps as possible, easily explained, and fairly instant gratification.

I'm certainly no expert, but I'd reccommend Phtoshop elements, take shot against green or blue background , making sure the clothes don't match (as mentioned above by Duffy Pratt)

Then use the magic wand tool to select background, then select inverse so person is selected - might want a little feather on the selection (1 or 2) perhaps. If you have Photoshop 4 (don't know about 3), you can then save the selection so its available for more fun things.

Good Luck! I think its wonderful that you're taking time with these kids.

Duffy Pratt

Yes, if the magic wand tool is set up to the right level of tolerance, that will be faster and easier than what I suggested.

Elements will be fine for what you want to do.

Duffy

windoze

Duffy Pratt wrote:

Yes, if the magic wand tool is set up to the right level of tolerance, that will be faster and easier than what I suggested.

Elements will be fine for what you want to do.

Duffy

big thanx duffy for taking the time to explain!


troy

Eric&Susan

Elements 4 has a new tool that 1-3 did not. I forget what it's called but you pick the tool and then paint over the area you want to keep and then ALT (I think) and paint over the area you don't want and it will automatically remove the unwanted section. It also has tools to fine tune and make pretty specific cut outs. You can feather you selection to make it look more real. I tried it once the other day playing around and it worked pretty well.

Eric