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What is the best way to cut out an image?


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Hey everyone,

How do you cut out an image and put it on another background (white, for example) and have a drop shadow and everything? I'm very particular, so it must be very smooth and antialiased.

Here's the particular image in question:

lumber.jpg

Thanks!

Go Yoder's!

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am... this is a paint.net fourm..., any ways,

I would use the magic want tool, and adjust the tolerence level until you get your whole piece of wood...

If that does not work,

I would use the Rectangle select tool, and select the whole peice of wood, than when you paste it onto your new layer, erase everything but the wood (saves time you dont have to erase as much)

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Hm... I tried it with magic wand myself, but you really get problems with the edges, no matter what tolerance you use or how high you set the saturation before using the mw...

The problem is, the edges are not really sharp and the background is not really white and also has a shadow on it. Even if you'd try drawing the selection pixel by pixel by hand you'd have difficulties to decide on quite a lot of the pixels.

And I doubt Photoshop tools could do it better... (I think the image itself is the problem)

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Hm... I tried it with magic wand myself, but you really get problems with the edges, no matter what tolerance you use or how high you set the saturation before using the mw...

The problem is, the edges are not really sharp and the background is not really white and also has a shadow on it. Even if you'd try drawing the selection pixel by pixel by hand you'd have difficulties to decide on quite a lot of the pixels.

And I doubt Photoshop tools could do it better... (I think the image itself is the problem)

Are there any tricks you could do with filters or anything to bring out the edges and so get the needed selection? Thanks to everyone for your thoughts!

Go Yoder's!

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This would be much simpler if PDN had a plug-in or filter that would feather the edges of a selection, like Photoshop. You would just select what you want, and soften it slightly.

I love programming but I don't have time right now to develop a plug-in. Would anyone be interested in taking it up?

Go Yoder's!

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The main hinderance is that the selection tools aren't anti-aliased. This can be somewhat overcome, however, by duplicating the layer after the background has been removed, moving the new layer behind the origianl, Gaussian-Blurring the duplicate layer with a radius of 2 or 3 pixels (your image is pretty small, so 2 would do nicely), then duplicating the blurred layer a few times. That method will take the color from the edges and kinda moosh it out around the jagged edges of a shape cut from a curved or diagonal selection.

So, you may try making a scrap layer, making lines in the scrap layer around the boards, Magic Wand Selecting the inside, inverting the selection, removing the background from the boards, and using the method above to smooth the edges.

plank.png

I am not a mechanism, I am part of the resistance;

I am an organism, an animal, a creature, I am a beast.

~ Becoming the Archetype

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