Removing a background from ink in water

[Michael_McCool]

Hi,

This is my first post as I am having to retouch some images I shot last week and have got a bit stuck.

I have shot a bunch of ink in water against a white background.

I want to be able to remove the white background and overlay the ink on to a different shot of two people where I make the ink look like stylised smoke.

An example of the idea can be seen here: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fx5RBfbJ_L...+sundsbo+2.jpg - I am having trouble as I can't make the white background disappear subtly enough.

Any advice or help on how to go about achieving the desired effect would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
Michael.

[Mike Needham]

Re: Removing a background from ink in water

Welcome to the forum McCool

It sounds like an easy task, especially if on white. Have you tried removing the white with Blend If sliders? Failing that, what have you tried?

It would be easier for everyone if you posted an image of said ink, or a crop of it.

[Flashtones]

Re: Removing a background from ink in water

hard to say without seeing the images, but first thing I'd try is putting the ink layer on top and setting it's layer blend mode to Multiply.

[marcelzuurmond]

Re: Removing a background from ink in water

Yes, or try levels of course or even the (native) dodge tool to get the job done. Looks like a cool idea, good luck!

[klev]

Re: Removing a background from ink in water

It's an old thread, but someone resurrected it. There isn't an elegant way to do that via normal methods. I'm going to refrain from suggesting mathematica, because I don't want to explain that.

The short answer is that there isn't an elegant way to do that. You can set up lighting to make it easier, but there will be some color correction and possibly a bit of tweaking on the mask. There has been a certain amount of research in the area of fuzzy selections, but for the past couple decades people have tuned these things by hand. Since you won't be able to completely remove the influence of the white background, you are best off making sure you have every bit of ink that is necessary in the selection, then using color correction methods to make it look good in the final composite.