Black background for plants etc

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DaveW
Posts: 1702
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 4:29 am
Location: Nottingham, UK

Black background for plants etc

Post by DaveW »

Somebody asked what I used to get a black background for my plants. I usually use an out of focus piece of black velvet. However another way you can achieve a black background behind your subject, if you do not have black velvet, is to use a plain coloured uncreased piece of dark cloth or board of a different colour behind the subject at the taking stage.
Then in post processing in Photoshop or Elements set the paint bucket tool on black and just click on the background. It will turn everything that particular shade jet black.

I am sure other photo-processing software has similar facilities too. If you have any creases in your cloth the paint bucket tool may see these as a different shade and leave them uncoloured, but you can usually just click the bucket on these and change them to jet black too.

DaveW
Last edited by DaveW on Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Danny
Posts: 725
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:07 pm
Location: New Zealand

Post by Danny »

Good post Dave.

I use a black curtain material and sometimes it can show dust spots, so keep your cloth clean folks :wink:

The other way with software which works very similar to Dave's technique, is to use the magic wand and set up the feather accordingly and use the cut option which you set to black or any colour you like.

If we do use the wand tool we can then use the gradient fill tools as well. Now we can have merging colours in two tone or multiple colours for a background..........just at a rough guess.

All the best and nice to see this posted Dave. Well done mate. :D

Danny.
Worry about the image that comes out of the box, rather than the box itself.

DaveW
Posts: 1702
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 4:29 am
Location: Nottingham, UK

Post by DaveW »

Danny, for just dust spots on the background the spot healing tool will remove these as it samples the pixels all around the spot and changes it to the surrounding pixels colour.

DaveW

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