Selecting white shirt off of white background?

Any tips for this? All we had was white seamless, looking back I'd rather of shot it on anything but that, but thats what we did. Don't know what we were thinking. In photoshop, so far I've used 2 adjustment layers. One brightness/contrast, and one curves, to darken and pump the contrast temporarily to help with selecting. Although technically its helped somewhat, its so far from perfect and I think its taking the same amount of time to make these selections than without them, its ridiculous. I've been using a combination of magic wand, quick selectection, and all three of the lassos.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.
 

d

Mar 8, 2015
417
1
I'd be manipulating the contrast/exposure/highlights in a duplicate layer to try to bring out the edge of the shirt, then tracing it with the pen tool to create a mask.

I feel sorry for you - I've been there myself a few times in the past, and later thought, "what was I thinking?!"

Dunno the particular circumstances, but remember you can always lower the background lighting a little (if independent of your key light) to get some contrast between a white shirt and white background, or possible bring in some large black cutters either side of a mannequin or model to darken the edges a little. Or if you're shooting a flat-lay shirt directly on the bg, some strips of black card arranged loosely around the edges of the shirt will also help bring out some contrast on the perimeter.

Cheers,
dp
 
Upvote 0

RGF

How you relate to the issue, is the issue.
Jul 13, 2012
2,820
39
as painful as this sounds, you could create the mask manually. By painting it at 100% or using the pen tool.

Also you could try using a curve to separate the two different whites. Try a very steep curve to turn the lighter object nearly white and darker shade of white dark gray

I been there and it is no fun.
 
Upvote 0
Well, the job is finally done. Thankfully it was for a friend of mine so they understood. I do not do shoots like this often, so I don't have my own seamless or backdrops. All they had was white seamless. Next time we will definitely be more prepared.

I ended up doing brightness/contrast and curves adjustments, really trying to bring out the edge of the shirt. We lit it very simple, shirt on white seamless, 2 flashes, one on each side, and me on step ladder looking down shooting. So we couldn't adjust the background lighting separately. Come to think of it, any background would have done well besides white, because in the end, they need all of the shirts cut out of whatever background it is and replaced with transparency.

What I ended up doing was manually cutting everything out with the polygonal lasso, and using refine edge to soften the result. Actually looks nice, and the polygonal lasso ended up being quicker than trying to use the magnetic lasso in this situation. Darker shirts were a breeze with quick select/magic wand and some magnetic lasso.

Thank you all for your tips, which I will definitely utilize next time I do something like this. Sorry I never got a chance to post a picture of the shirt, but just imagine a white shirt on an almost equally white background :)
 
Upvote 0
Feb 15, 2015
667
10
I do this sort of thing frequently, though rather with B&W images. I duplicate the image layer, put a new layer in between the two image layers, fill it with whatever color I want. Then usually start with smart selection for those portions that work, feather the edge. For the rest, I use eraser with brushes of different sizes and hardnesses for what I need to make the transition look natural. The most important adjustment is spacing, down from the default 25%, which results in jagged edges, to 5%. For eraser work, a Wacom tablet is the saving grace. I generally work at 200-300% on a large screen for this kind of work.

The bottom layer has the original image untouched, the top layer has the adjusted image, all in the same file.

The masking may be more photoshop-like, but cutting out actually works, particularly once you combine multiple images for a plate. Figuring out where a mask has gone astray can be a daunting task in heavily layered files. I've literally done hundreds of 3x4 (12 images) plates for scientific pubs. 12 layers for images, then adjustment layers, scale bars, lettering, separation lines, some possibly in layer groups, and maybe a final output USM layer. Adding masks is a recipe for disaster.
 
Upvote 0

d

Mar 8, 2015
417
1
Zeidora said:
I do this sort of thing frequently, though rather with B&W images. I duplicate the image layer, put a new layer in between the two image layers, fill it with whatever color I want. Then usually start with smart selection for those portions that work, feather the edge. For the rest, I use eraser with brushes of different sizes and hardnesses for what I need to make the transition look natural. The most important adjustment is spacing, down from the default 25%, which results in jagged edges, to 5%. For eraser work, a Wacom tablet is the saving grace. I generally work at 200-300% on a large screen for this kind of work.

The bottom layer has the original image untouched, the top layer has the adjusted image, all in the same file.

The masking may be more photoshop-like, but cutting out actually works, particularly once you combine multiple images for a plate. Figuring out where a mask has gone astray can be a daunting task in heavily layered files. I've literally done hundreds of 3x4 (12 images) plates for scientific pubs. 12 layers for images, then adjustment layers, scale bars, lettering, separation lines, some possibly in layer groups, and maybe a final output USM layer. Adding masks is a recipe for disaster.

Sounds like you'd be better off using Adobe InDesign for your 3x4 plates.

And I'm not sure why you'd consider the use of a mask detrimental to the OP's task - are you familiar with the benefits of a non-destructive editing workflow?
 
Upvote 0
I would use Photoshop pen tool (as others have suggested) then edit the bezier curve, to make a clipping path, then save as an eps. Easier to move your background back from the product and control the light. (Or if we were going to drop out without a mask, just letting the product merge into the white b.g., in the old days of 4x5 film, we would put the product in front of the cove and make sure the white cove had an incident reading of one stop more light than the product.

And as a caution, a lot of products are more reflective than they seem to be at first glance. Shirts, often not so much, but shoes, for instance often are quite reflective and you can get weird off colors going into you product from the background. Often, better to take more time, and get the product away from the background, and have a lot of seamless choices.
 
Upvote 0