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BrianZ's Golf Course Design Resource


Section 2: Deleting the Background

Use the Color Replacer Tool to get rid of the main solid color, in this case the sky.

  1. Hide all layers except the Background Deleted Layer and select this layer.
  2. Select the Color Replacer Tool.
  3. Set the tolerance level to 32.
  4. Set your foreground color to white (or the color you set as your invisible color if different).
  5. Set your background color to a color in your background you are getting rid of by holding the control key down and right clicking on the color in the image.
  6. Double click anywhere on your image. This applies the color replacement to the entire image.

This makes all parts of the image with the selected background color invisible. The tolerance determines how much different the color can be from the exact color you selected. A higher tolerance affects a wider range of colors. A good starting place is 32.

You'll have something that looks similar to this:

Image After First Background Erase Click

Repeat this process, for any areas that don't disappear, until most of the sky is gone. Leave the blue around the edges of your object alone. You will deal with that later. For now you just want to knock out the majority of the background. Save your work when you are finished.

You can use this process for any colors behind your object that aren't too close to colors contained within the object. You can also make a selection around an area to localize the erasing to a specific part if the color is in your object elsewhere. This is worth trying in areas that are hard to erase around by hand such as tree branches. This works as long as the background isn't too close in color to the part of the object that is selected.

Localizing with Selection

You manually remove the rest of the background, as described in the next section.

When you have finished with this method, convert your Background Deleted layer to a mask and have it applied to the Original Image layer.

  1. Make only the Background Deleted layer visible.
  2. Right click on the Original Image layer and select New Mask Layer > From Image.
  3. Select the current file you are working on under source window.
  4. Select Source Opacity under Create Mask From.
  5. Uncheck Invert Mask and click OK. The mask is created based on the visible layer.
    Mask Dialog Box
  6. Rename the mask layer Background Mask.
  7. Rename the group layer Final Image Group.
  8. Hide the Background Deleted layer and make the Original Image layer visible.

Layers Palette

For removing the rest of the background, such as ground or other trees, move on to Section 3: Manual Removal.

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