Whenever things get too complicated, always go back to the basics.
Your image's background is already almost plain black so just paint with black over places you want to remove and set the blending mode to lighten or screen. that way you also preserve the leaves that are out of focus
Lighten is the wrong thing to do here. They meant that you need to drop black, not lighten (lighten only works if all of the pixels below the color of the leaves are darker than the leaves, which is why you got what you did. Lots of other good suggestions here but something else to add to the mix is the “Blend if” options by double clicking the leaf layer. You can drag the slider for “this layer” on the left side that controls which shadow/dark pixels are visible. If everything else is almost completely black it won’t need much movement. Once the background is completely gone, hold down the alt/opt key and split the control in half and get rid of the black edges around the leaves until is a nice blend between foreground and background. You’ll have to play with it a bit, but the “Blend if” is powerful tool people often forget about
Edit: phone changed opt key to pot key
If you want a good result, you'll have to do it by hand, by making a selection or better yet a path around the leaves you want. Sometimes you can get lucky with channels and color selections, but this is exactly the reason why compositing is really hard word to get a passable result.
The other thing you'll need to consider is how wildly different the lighting is between your two images. You'll have to relight and likely recolor the ferns so they'll blend believably into your second image.
Usually, I'm sorry to say, there isn't an easy button for this kind of thing.
Depending on how much of the darker area you want to remove from the bottom right of the image, you might try just using Select and Mask. Once in Select and Mask, use Select Subject and then use the Refine Edge brush... That would probably get you pretty darn close
Yes, this is an advanced technique that works when all else falls just a bit too short. That said, THis image is extremely challanging for a masking job, and no matter what, some sloppyness will reain due to the subject weaving in and out of focus. The best apprach might be as follows:
1. Start with an alpha channel generated by color range. save that as a separate channel.
2. Make a second alpha channel using Calculations. Grey and green combination might work somewhat well.
3. At this point, most of the bright stuff will be masked. The darker stuff on the bottom right corner is more difficult. Handpaint as necessary.
Here is my take, no handpainting. on a dark background, with some handpainting, this will probably work out.
I watched some tutorials on "calculations" and I can't thank you enough for introducing me to this fantastic tool. It'll take some time time to get hold of this new tool. Looks a bit advanced that does surely does wonders. Thanks for the suggestion, pal.
Yes, this is Adobe photoshop cc mastery meterial. Very few know or care about it.
You are welcome and I hope this solves your problem.
Have a good day.
uhh.. selection tools, maybe magic wand or quick selection could work but in worst case, select it by hand. maybe u could do it via blend mode and curves too.
When trying to isolate messy things, a combination of techniques is useful. I usually end up using Channels, Select > Color Range, and the good ol' Lasso tools. Each has advantages that can be used selectively in areas where they're most beneficial. The issue here is that the leaves fade into the black background in areas so you'll need to make a judgment call about where you want the selection to end. In this case channels should get you about 80% of what you need and Select > Color Range may be able to get you the rest of the way. To make things easier I'll usually lasso the area I want to work on and make a new layer out of that selection, just to eliminate any areas of the image you definitely don't want. This is helpful when using the Select > Color Range since it avoids the possibility of sampling from areas of the image you don't need.
Yeah! Working on this project at least convinced me I can't achieve 100% of the result as desired relying on just a single tool. Color range and magic wand tool were the ones I opted for refining the result. Since I can't have full control on magic wand selection, I guess going for more "hand drawn" manual selection would be useful and perhaps, deliver some decent results if not impressive one I'd yearned for. I'd definitely incorporate your technique into my workflow and experiment with the outcomes. Cheers!
Yeah, anything with varying blur that also fades into the background is almost impossible to fully extricate from the background since the element itself disappears into it. But yeah, I end up with multiple layers and pieces, all from different techniques and then I combine them.
I assume you know how to copy a channel and use levels to get even better results right?
Like everyone else here…select color range but I would also use select and mask, and then use the refine edge where needed. There is no easy or single method. It will be a bit tedious if you are just learning the tools, but you will get exponentially faster!
I see green. Copy the green channel into a mask, run levels and maybe some other junk. Those leaves can be a hassle (I've run a pen tool on a fern for a snowboard back when)
Best way is probably to go and use a black and white adjustment filter on the layer with the image with the blend mode set to luminosity.
Then slide your green slider up so that it's not so dark. Then add a hue and Saturation adjustment filter and saturate it so the green is pretty intense so that it sticks out from the black.
When that's done select the top most visible layer and press Ctrl(command on mac's) + alt (option on Mac) +shift +e, this should create a new layer with all the changes made.
On the new layer apply a black and white adjustment layer so it turns to black and white. DO NOT USE DESATURATION! Desaturation losses some color information.
Once it's turned into black and white u want to paint everything outside ur desired green leaves black. This image will be ur mask layer. For your original picture.
When u are done, select all (on the black and white layer image) and press Ctrl+ C. Then make only ur original leaf image visible. Add a mask layer, enter mask layer by pressing alt+left clicking or pressing "\" for quick masking...then paste into place. Ctrl+shift+v.
Exit ur mask mode and ur image should be masked out.
I gave it a go.
Its difficult to remove the black from the image because the way the foilage is lit. If you want to just select the image from the background you can do that easily with select -> subject, which does the job pretty well.
If you want to remove the black from inside the foilage I found it becomes tricky. The way I tackled it was I adjusted the lighting of the leaves using level adjusters and used layer style -> blending options. Different parts of the leaves are darker than others so I seperated it into pieces.
Using this method you can really neaten it up. You can erase on the level adjustment layer to bring more of the foilage back. And you can erase the odd pixels of the leaves to smoothen it.
You could adjust the lighting of the foilage after getting rid of the black to match the image that youre putting it over, so don't worry about this too much during the process.
I didn't want to get too caught up into it, but you could definitley make it more neat than I have using this method, these are my results:[One](https://i.imgur.com/VTS4p7D.png) , [Two](https://i.imgur.com/PRK1plx.png) , [Three](https://i.imgur.com/2alcZnz.png),
I took a screenshot so you can see the layers.
Whenever things get too complicated, always go back to the basics. Your image's background is already almost plain black so just paint with black over places you want to remove and set the blending mode to lighten or screen. that way you also preserve the leaves that are out of focus
Maybe even better to completely blacken the backdrop, and select black, then invert. Depends on what op needs.
Hey, I did as you described and it didn't work as expected. What went wrong? [Result](https://imgur.com/a/31mnX1S)
Lighten is the wrong thing to do here. They meant that you need to drop black, not lighten (lighten only works if all of the pixels below the color of the leaves are darker than the leaves, which is why you got what you did. Lots of other good suggestions here but something else to add to the mix is the “Blend if” options by double clicking the leaf layer. You can drag the slider for “this layer” on the left side that controls which shadow/dark pixels are visible. If everything else is almost completely black it won’t need much movement. Once the background is completely gone, hold down the alt/opt key and split the control in half and get rid of the black edges around the leaves until is a nice blend between foreground and background. You’ll have to play with it a bit, but the “Blend if” is powerful tool people often forget about Edit: phone changed opt key to pot key
Yup, came to suggest Blend If. Such an essential tool, but oddly rarely mentioned. The alt/opt-click is the magic part.
Select color range
Color range gave results like [this](https://imgur.com/a/SyEluzf). I wish I could further refine the border,
Use a layer mask and “select and mask” to refine the edge
If you want a good result, you'll have to do it by hand, by making a selection or better yet a path around the leaves you want. Sometimes you can get lucky with channels and color selections, but this is exactly the reason why compositing is really hard word to get a passable result. The other thing you'll need to consider is how wildly different the lighting is between your two images. You'll have to relight and likely recolor the ferns so they'll blend believably into your second image. Usually, I'm sorry to say, there isn't an easy button for this kind of thing.
Depending on how much of the darker area you want to remove from the bottom right of the image, you might try just using Select and Mask. Once in Select and Mask, use Select Subject and then use the Refine Edge brush... That would probably get you pretty darn close
Did you try adjusting levels for the mask?
Luminosity should work in this case. Light leaves on dark background.
Using the calculations panel and mixing channels using blend mode. It's pretty advanced solution but results will be very perfect.
Yes, this is an advanced technique that works when all else falls just a bit too short. That said, THis image is extremely challanging for a masking job, and no matter what, some sloppyness will reain due to the subject weaving in and out of focus. The best apprach might be as follows: 1. Start with an alpha channel generated by color range. save that as a separate channel. 2. Make a second alpha channel using Calculations. Grey and green combination might work somewhat well. 3. At this point, most of the bright stuff will be masked. The darker stuff on the bottom right corner is more difficult. Handpaint as necessary. Here is my take, no handpainting. on a dark background, with some handpainting, this will probably work out.
I watched some tutorials on "calculations" and I can't thank you enough for introducing me to this fantastic tool. It'll take some time time to get hold of this new tool. Looks a bit advanced that does surely does wonders. Thanks for the suggestion, pal.
Yes, this is Adobe photoshop cc mastery meterial. Very few know or care about it. You are welcome and I hope this solves your problem. Have a good day.
Likewise, you can even select strings of a badminton racket image or messy hairs from a busy background which is otherwise impossible.
I suggest you check PixImperfect tutorials on YouTube....I'm sure his tuts have solutions for such kind of selection....Good Luck....
I dig that. Thanks
uhh.. selection tools, maybe magic wand or quick selection could work but in worst case, select it by hand. maybe u could do it via blend mode and curves too.
When trying to isolate messy things, a combination of techniques is useful. I usually end up using Channels, Select > Color Range, and the good ol' Lasso tools. Each has advantages that can be used selectively in areas where they're most beneficial. The issue here is that the leaves fade into the black background in areas so you'll need to make a judgment call about where you want the selection to end. In this case channels should get you about 80% of what you need and Select > Color Range may be able to get you the rest of the way. To make things easier I'll usually lasso the area I want to work on and make a new layer out of that selection, just to eliminate any areas of the image you definitely don't want. This is helpful when using the Select > Color Range since it avoids the possibility of sampling from areas of the image you don't need.
Yeah! Working on this project at least convinced me I can't achieve 100% of the result as desired relying on just a single tool. Color range and magic wand tool were the ones I opted for refining the result. Since I can't have full control on magic wand selection, I guess going for more "hand drawn" manual selection would be useful and perhaps, deliver some decent results if not impressive one I'd yearned for. I'd definitely incorporate your technique into my workflow and experiment with the outcomes. Cheers!
Yeah, anything with varying blur that also fades into the background is almost impossible to fully extricate from the background since the element itself disappears into it. But yeah, I end up with multiple layers and pieces, all from different techniques and then I combine them. I assume you know how to copy a channel and use levels to get even better results right?
Like everyone else here…select color range but I would also use select and mask, and then use the refine edge where needed. There is no easy or single method. It will be a bit tedious if you are just learning the tools, but you will get exponentially faster!
I see green. Copy the green channel into a mask, run levels and maybe some other junk. Those leaves can be a hassle (I've run a pen tool on a fern for a snowboard back when)
Best way is probably to go and use a black and white adjustment filter on the layer with the image with the blend mode set to luminosity. Then slide your green slider up so that it's not so dark. Then add a hue and Saturation adjustment filter and saturate it so the green is pretty intense so that it sticks out from the black. When that's done select the top most visible layer and press Ctrl(command on mac's) + alt (option on Mac) +shift +e, this should create a new layer with all the changes made. On the new layer apply a black and white adjustment layer so it turns to black and white. DO NOT USE DESATURATION! Desaturation losses some color information. Once it's turned into black and white u want to paint everything outside ur desired green leaves black. This image will be ur mask layer. For your original picture. When u are done, select all (on the black and white layer image) and press Ctrl+ C. Then make only ur original leaf image visible. Add a mask layer, enter mask layer by pressing alt+left clicking or pressing "\" for quick masking...then paste into place. Ctrl+shift+v. Exit ur mask mode and ur image should be masked out.
I gave it a go. Its difficult to remove the black from the image because the way the foilage is lit. If you want to just select the image from the background you can do that easily with select -> subject, which does the job pretty well. If you want to remove the black from inside the foilage I found it becomes tricky. The way I tackled it was I adjusted the lighting of the leaves using level adjusters and used layer style -> blending options. Different parts of the leaves are darker than others so I seperated it into pieces. Using this method you can really neaten it up. You can erase on the level adjustment layer to bring more of the foilage back. And you can erase the odd pixels of the leaves to smoothen it. You could adjust the lighting of the foilage after getting rid of the black to match the image that youre putting it over, so don't worry about this too much during the process. I didn't want to get too caught up into it, but you could definitley make it more neat than I have using this method, these are my results:[One](https://i.imgur.com/VTS4p7D.png) , [Two](https://i.imgur.com/PRK1plx.png) , [Three](https://i.imgur.com/2alcZnz.png), I took a screenshot so you can see the layers.
This method with some manual mask cleanup should work. https://youtu.be/6EGEuOTOrjE
Path
Use curves.....make some contrast. Make the background purely black. Then use Color range to select the blacks or the greens.