Cleanly Removing Image Background When Boundaries Are Not Well Defined?

[tackyjan]

Hello All!

 

I had the following image and I wanted to remove the background image (color black):

 

 

I need to remove all the black background image so I thought that using the Magic Wand tool would suffice. I selected Magic Wand and set the Tolerance to 15% and began selecting/deleting the black background with several clicks.

 

This is a partial image of what i ended up with:

 

As you can see pretty much all the black background was removed except sporadic pieces along the perimeter. I tried using the Magic Wand tool again except this time  I set the Tolerance to ~45%. This was too much as the selections made by the magic wand "ate" into the boundary of the inner image. So clearly there is a fine-line between patience, tolerance, and results when using the Magic Wand.

 

The problem I have is this happens to me all the time. Especially with images on a background whose boundaries aren't clearly defined with some arbitrarily different border color to allow for the Magic Brush's logic to easily find the "edge."

 

More generally, this issue happens whenever the original image was made such that the boundary (the red oval) blends in to the background resulting in pixels on the boundary that "merge" or "morph" from the inner color to the outer color thereby eliminating any clear color boundary between the two that Magic Would would then be able to detect and know where the true edge is.

 

The next thing I tried was to use the Color Replace tool. I figured if I selected the leftover black color to be replaced by transparent then I could use the color re-placer tool pull off the rest of the red. The problem I have with Color Replacer is I just cannot ever seem to figure out how it works. :O The documentation doesn't seem to be thorough on how to use the Color Replacer either that or I am just dumb to the way it works.

 

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions, either a way to do this better in Paint.NET, using an Add-on, or even using another Image Editing program that might be able to recognize these boundaries better?

 

Thank you.

 

Jan

Edited September 3, 2014 by tackyjan

[Ego Eram Reputo]

To rid yourself of the remnant black edges (or any other color) I highly recommend AA's Assistant.  Find it here: Dpy's Plugin Pack

 

After installation & restarting paint.net, you'll find it in the Effects > Object menu.  

 

Tip:  You may need to run it twice to clear up everything.

[ventor1]

If plugins are O.K., then Grim Colour Reaper is what you are after:

 

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/15595-grim-color-reaper-plugin/?hl=+grim%20+reaper

 

It is easy to use and the dialogue is very self explanatory.

 

With images such as that though you may need to feather the edges and then run AA's assistant (refer to EER's link above).

Edited September 3, 2014 by ventor1

[Cc4FuzzyHuggles]

I do what ventor1 suggested with BoltBait's Feather plugin and AA's Assistant.

But, if edges are SUPER bad, I will add a new layer and then trace the edges using the line/curve tool.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Cc4FuzzyHuggles

[tackyjan]

Thank you all for the suggestions! I will try them out now!