white backgrounds

Oh dear- I’m sure we’ve been here before- but is there an easy way to remove the white background from a piece of clip art?

This is something which causes aggro to me every day. I teach children to make say, a nameplate for their bedroom door. And then the girls want to put a dog on from “Art Explosion” (Nova) and we can’t remove the white rectangle.

Is there an easy, child-capable (as it were) answer?


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

It depends. How white is the background? If you want a simple answer,
the magic wand tool, in Photoshop that is. However, if you have a
complex background, you may be fussing around for an awful long time.
Choose “inverse”, then save as a png or a tiff, but not as a jpeg,
because jpegs can’t handle transparency. Hope that helps.

regards,

Tom

On 27 Sep 2009, at 18:24, “jayartibee” email@hidden wrote:

Is there an easy, child-capable (as it were) answer?


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

If you have a mac, you can remove colors using Preview (comes pre-
installed). In the toolbar at the top, choose select and then “instant
Alpha.” It’s best not to try and remove everything in one swoop, just
work with a small section, delete, then repeat. Not photoshop, but
works surprisingly well for many photos.

John Akin

On Sep 27, 2009, at 1:24 PM, jayartibee wrote:

Oh dear- I’m sure we’ve been here before- but is there an easy way
to remove the white background from a piece of clip art?

This is something which causes aggro to me every day. I teach
children to make say, a nameplate for their bedroom door. And then
the girls want to put a dog on from “Art Explosion” (Nova) and we
can’t remove the white rectangle.

Is there an easy, child-capable (as it were) answer?


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Heck- you have to clarify that- I’ve never seen, and can’t see “Instant Alpha” in the Preview toolbar.


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Sorry,

I should have been more careful with my steps—it’s actually the
sidebar that opens up a toolbar. I’ve uploaded a PDF to my dropbox
which outlines the steps. This link will download a screenSteps PDF
(862KB):

<http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1475079/Accessing%20Toolbar%20in%20Preview.pdf

Hope this helps.

John Akin

On Sep 27, 2009, at 5:18 PM, jayartibee wrote:

Heck- you have to clarify that- I’ve never seen, and can’t see
“Instant Alpha” in the Preview toolbar.


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Fab- I owe you one!


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

For images with white backgrounds, the ‘Mask White Image Pixels’ Applescript makes the white areas of JPEG images transparent. This doesn’t work with TIFFs.
There will probably be white halos around the edge of the cut-out image and some parts of the picture (which you want to keep) might/will probably disappear.

iMaginator’s ‘Mask by Color’ feature erases a specified colour. A Precision slider controls how much is erased. This is fun to use, but a bit fiddly.

For more control, choose Intaglo’s Path tool and draw a path around the target image (the bits you want to keep), select the path and image and choose Group (Image menu). Open the Group palette (Window menu) and choose ‘Standard’. The background disappears.


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

where do I find the ‘Mask White Image Pixels’ Applescript


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

It’s in the Scripts folder.
Go to Intaglio’s top menu bar and press the icon that looks a bit like a 3D ‘S’. The Scripts folder opens. The Make White Image Pixels script is in there. Double-click it and when it opens in Script Editor, press the Run button.


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Well, in fact with the children, Preview and Instant Alpha matting is the answer. Excellent- thanks very much. Wanted to do it for so long


Intaglio mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options