Adobe Photoshop magic wand, eraser tool, and transparent background

I'm having a hard time taking an image and erasing everything but the central focus of the picture. When I select everything I want to get rid of with the magic wand and then cut that, I am left with a white background around the central object of the image. What is a better way to do this?

 

Use the dodge and burn tool. Magic wand sucks. Zoom in (like 200%) set your brush size to like 30 pixels and remove the background near the object with the dodge tool (it'll slowly turn white). After you are done, zoom out to 100%, change to the eraser tool, make it like 80 pixels and start erasing the rest.

 

can you show the picture you want to be edited? i use pen tool+masking to remove the background of the picture it is not fastest way but it will show a clean output rather than magic wand tool...

 

I'll try and upload the image when I get a chance. Is there a way to upload images on this forum without just linking to it offsite? Lorien's method seems to work great although I have a hard time zooming in that close with the poor resolution of my monitor.

 

A lot of the time, I will isolate the desired object as much as possible and then use the eraser 'per version' to finish going around the object. Using the pen version of the eraser slightly fades the edges into the background which leaves a natural look when you use the object on other backgrounds. Definitely not the fastest method but the results are usually very good.

Make a background layer and erasing on the layer with the object will completely isolate the object for anything else, so you don't have to worry about selecting it later or anything.

 

Pen tool is better solution for cutting image edges without any white (or whatever background color) background left around the image. Though It is time taking process but the outcome is fruitful.

Yes, you can upload your images. Try ar http://reg.imageshack.us/ and refer the url sent by Imageshack after your image has been uploaded.

 

Do you think Adobe will ever come out with a feature that makes this somewhat easier or are we going to always have to do this by hand? Your suggestions have helped me greatly improve the process of isolating objects in images and placing them on a transparent background, but it still takes me 10-15 minutes of time.

 

This is the correct method to do this, maybe slightly overkill for web images though?

I use quick mask and then paint out my object, flip out of quick mask to get a selection then use select -> feather to soften it if required and use add layer mask to mask. Somethimes I combine this with the magic lasso, then switch into quick mask.

It's not the best method, but have you every tried to cut out spider chrysanthimums and gypsophlia using the pen + mask method? that would take forever.

 

I don't know how hard it would be, but I think it would make for a great website idea to show this stage by stage visually. That is, take a snapshot of each thing you do with prnt scrn and display it on a webpage for others to learn this. You all have given me a lot to think about but it's still a little hard to visualize.

 

I use th pen tool to cut certain portion of the image. Pen tool is more accurate and neater than magic wand.

 

Even better than the pen tool is zooming in with the polygonic lasso tool. It allows you to connect the dots. The more dots, the more round or sharp your selection.

I clean pictures for retail stores online and use this with A plus quality.