There were quite a few interesting modifications to that photo of the guy (sorry, I’ve forgotten who it is) unicycling with one of his kids in a pram and another standing on the crown of the uni. Could someone please tell me how to get only an outline of the important parts of a photo? What I’d like to do is edit the photo I’ve attached so you can only see the rider, log and other important bits but no background trees and so on. Can someone please tell me how to?
Thanks a lot,
Andrew
I’m not sure if there is any free software that can do that. Photoshop can, most easily with a tool called Magnetic something. I would have to open the software (which I don’t have here) to remember exactly what it’s called and how it’s done. Others may have more valuable advice 
I don’t know whether it would still be clear how high up you are if you edit away the backdrop.
The rider with his kids was David Stone from NYC. The thread was called ‘some graphics fun’ IIRC, and I’ve a couple of modified pics on my site.
Klaas Bil
Thanks Klaas.
My aim isn’t to try to make it look high or anything…I just thought it would look interesting and I’ve actually always wondered how to do the effect.
Andrew
In photoshop it’s the Magic Wand tool. Click a section of the picture with it, then hold down the shift key to select more of the picture. You can adjust the tolerance level (how much it will pick up) to make it select what you want and not select other things. Hold down the alt and click on parts of the picture to deselect details as well. Bad instructions, but don’t know if you’re even using photoshop.
Here’s my 5 minute attempt to clean up the picture.
BTW, if you want me to spend a little longer and finish cleaning up the rough edges, I could do that. I just wanted to show you what Photoshop could do. I would suggest trying. It’s fun!
Oh, and nice picture! Good choice for editing.
The Gimp is also able to select parts of an image using a magic wand type tool. The Gimp is free, unlike Photoshop.
There are some tutorials on the web about how to use The Gimp. Unfortunately I don’t have any good tutorials in my bookmarks, but I know there are some descent Gimp tutorials out there. I’m not too fond of the The Gimp’s interface but it’s still OK. I only use The Gimp for very basic image editing and I don’t know how to do anything fancy with it yet. It’s good stuff if you are looking for a free solution. The learning curve can be a bit harder than it needs to be because of the interface and the lack of built in help guides or wizards.
Other image editing tools like Photoshop Elements and Paintshop Pro can also select sections of an image with a magic wand type tool.
actually you would be better off with the magnetic lasso, as they call it, toget the main parts off, but then with a sturdy hand you would want to get the excess with just the lasso and eraser, I’m on my laptop now but next time I am on my pc I’ll fix it up for ya andrew. just be sure to sign on to msn messenger whenever you are online so I can talk to you about it.
Jonathan Ware
Photoshop is pretty much the standard for photo retouching like this. John Childs always suprises me with his free software resources, but Photoshop is kind of the accepted “right tool for the job”. It is pretty expensive. That’s why you need to get a job where its part of your work, so you have access to it whenever…like me.
What your looking for in Photoshop is a combination of tools, in this case, the magnetic lasso tool, the marquee selection tools, and the eraser tool. Your picture has serious issues, though. The best thing to do is know what you want to do with the picture before you shoot it and keep in mind what your planning when you shoot. The background in this pic is very difficult to remove while keeping the picture looking right.
Whether your using the magnetic lasso, or just selecting material freehand, either you or the computer is looking for an edge - where does the rider end and the background begin? In this case because of the lighting, the nature of the background, and the resolution of the image, there are no sharp edges and everything blends together. Notice how the wheel and the rider’s legs have a green halo. That’s because the edges blur. It’s either cut here and get the green halo, or cut a few pixels in and start trimming meat off the guy’s bones.
One solution has to do with the resolution. This shot is pretty small. If you scanned this photo yourself, you can scan it again at a really high resolution. The edges will be a lot easier to pick out if there is more detail in the image. If this was shot with a low-res digital camera, there’s no way to bring that res up, so forget it. If you could send me a higher resolution version, I could clean it up for you.
That’s probably the best solution anyway. There are a lot of peoplel on this board with access to multimedia tools like photoshop. Within reason, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would do this sort of stuff for you.
Anyway, sorry about the longwinded post. This is about the best I could do with this picture:
Thanks a lot guys, I didn’t want you to spend too much time on it, but thankyou.
I’ve got Paint Shop Pro 6 and I just found a magnetic wand function but as you said Nick, it’s not an ideal photo.
Andrew
Just make sure you’re not confusing ‘magnetic’ and ‘magic’. I remember from Paint Shop Pro 3 that it had a magic wand but nothing ‘magnetic’. The magic wand only works well for very clear-cut cases, where there is consistent contrast difference between object and background.
Klaas Bil
Yes, you’re right Klaas. It was a ‘magic’ wand. I had a go at just erasing the background out…
