Images: help or advice

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Hi there

I was looking for help from people that are good with manipulating images. I have a few pictures of images for a product that we are going to sell on Amazon. For the main image on Amazon it needs to be a plain white background,, so I need to use a cutting tool, included on most photo editing programs, so that I can remove it and paste it on a new image (plain white FFFFF), however, the images are sort of complex. It's a mold testing kit, and there are things that are difficult to cut with my amateur skills. Is there someone that's good at cutting images or can recommend me with the best (free) photo software that I can make a cut out.

I think it's ridiculous that Amazon would be so particular about teh images to have us remove it from a plain background to a pure white background.

[Miss Chicken]

You should just post the image here so that people (not me) could give it a try. I once posted a photo I wanted to put on a mug, but had too much background, and someone here did a marvelous photoshop on it.

[scotpens]

Flying Spaghetti Monster wrote:

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I think it's ridiculous that Amazon would be so particular about the images to have us remove it from a plain background to a pure white background.

The "plain" background would probably show up as a shaded box surrounding the image, hence the need to drop out the background.

I've just started learning to use GIMP -- the freeware equivalent of Photoshop. You can use GIMP's selection tools to select and delete portions of images the same way as in Photoshop.

[Locutus of Bored]

I agree with the suggestion to just post the image here and have one of our photoshop experts do it for you, since it's a pretty simple task.

However, the best free programs I would recommend for photo editing are:

Gimp -

http://www.gimp.org/

It is essentially a free equivalent to Photoshop, but it has a bit of a high learning curve and really requires you to pay attention to the tutorials, so it's not something you can pick up quickly.

Paint.net -

http://www.getpaint.net/

Not as sophisticated as Gimp, but it's a fairly simple user interface that should be familiar to anyone who has used basic photo editing software before, an easy learning curve, and the ability to add a ton of new features through free add-ons available on the site.

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have at least two of those programs, in addition to Microsoft Digital Photo Editor, and I've been spending hours today trying to make a cut-out, so that way I can place it on pure white for amazon. Below is the one of the images, to give you an idea of why it's difficult, what with all the translucent surfaces. Every time I do it, it comes out unprofessional and shoddy, and unworthy of something anyone would want to look at.

[Finn]

Put them on a different surface that would contrast the light colored items...

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I'm worried that the translucency will show throw and clear items will look dull, black, or grey.

[Squiggy]

Use a flash.

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, put them on a white background (use plain paper if you have to) and very bright lights (or a flash) when taking the photos. Trying to fix the photo above sounds like an exercise in misery.

[Ar-Pharazon]

If you want to remove the background color, put the items against a color that isn't in any of the items, like orange or green in this case.

Then it's a lot easier for something like PhotoShop to remove the background color without removing parts of the objects.

Though, since the booklet & some parts of the items are already white, you might be better off just using a light colored background and leaving it as is.

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Thanks for the advice

Amazon won't let us use it as the main image unless the background is pure white.

What a pain

[Ar-Pharazon]

You could still put the image on a bright white B/G, maybe a brighter white than anything you have at home.

Do you have a colored sheet or paper you could photograph the items on? I bought an orange sheet at Walmart just for such occasions.

If you can post a picture with the colored B/G, it would be easy to get rid of that color & put the image on any other B/G color.

The only thing that might be difficult is that translucent syringe.

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Using evenm the brightest white would still not be pure white to amazon. It ahs to be (RGB 0,0,0; hex #FFFFFF). Even the whitest surface would have gradient shadowing. As for using orange, yeah i'll have to try that. I probably won't be able to take to take the photo until tomorrow or Monday. Orange is a good idea.

Thanks for your advice/help/ everything!

[smiki]

Is this okay?

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

That is awesome! Thanks for that. I'll show it to my partner in the morning!