photoshop Green Background for Pictures

[Rumi Shippe]

Hello!

I have a question, I'm still learning how to make a better photo edition.

Anyone have experience in removing green background and making "professional" vendors pics in photoshop?

Is it better to take 2 pictures? One in white background and other in green background?

I appreciate any help.

Thank you!

[Tamara Artis]

The green screen doesn't have to be green, it can be any color you chose. Pay attention to the color of your clothing, if you have white dress and put the avi in front of the white background, it will be hard to cut it out. If you put white dress in front of the green background it will be really easy to cut out but there is a danger for some of the green color to go over on the dress. If your avatar has blonde hair and you put her in front of the green screen, some of that green color will always be on the hair... I prefer neutral colors and advise you to make few test shots with different colors and see what looks best for you. 

Few more tips: 

• when you want to zoom-in, use Ctrl+0 on your keyboard, Ctrl+9 for reset the camera view (this makes the avatar look natural);
• always save snapshots as png and set a custom size, keep "constrains proportions" checked, set the size of the snapshot as big as you can. Work on big photos and when you are finished, resize it and save for web and devices;
• use normal font, one that is easy to read. Avoid comic sans and any cartoonish looking or anything with too much curves;
• its best to show clothing on an avatar but people put whatever they like;
• When you setup vendors on SL marketplace, you can put many snapshots there, put as many as you want, from different angles. 
• Never edit too much of your vendor images, only the technical parts, leave the artistic for profile and other shots. 

 

 

[Chase01]

Most people tend to use either green or a blue background if they intend on removing it in post.The two colors are generally used because of the amount of contrast they will have with the subject which makes it easier to remove it digitally. It is nice when a vendor does have more then 1 photo of the product but In most cases you may not only need 2-3 photos in total. Since you didn't really give any specifics on what you sell I'd rather not generalize too much but Tamara posted good tips.

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

I'll add a little to Tamara's and Chase's good advice.

There are at least two things to consider when selecting a backdrop color to help do "chroma key" cutouts.

1) What background color is most different from the colors at the periphery of the object/avatar you're going to cutout? As Tamara and Chase have said, you want to make sure that there's maximum contrast between the subject and background to aid in doing the cut. Depending on the tools you use to make the cut, you may get better results using the one color channel that yields the most contrasty image. Photoshop usually does this automatically.

If you can lock down the avatar/object and camera for the shoot, you can also swap clothing and skins to create a mask first. I have all-black and all-white skins and hair to do exactly that. This works well for system layer clothing and skins, as they don't change the avatar outline. Attachments require more effort, as you'd need custom colored versions of them, and you're likely to have more of those in inventory than skins and hair. Snap a picture of your all black avatar against a white background and use it to create the mask for all subsequent photographs. If you're photographing objects that you can modify, do the same thing. You can also play with Windlight settings to increase contract between subject and background. There was once (and may still be) a snapshot setting that colors object according to their depth in the scene. That was very handy for creating masks.

2) What background color is most like the colors in the background/s over which you'll be placing the cutout? If you're going to paste into a very dark backgrounds, don't use light colors as the backdrops for your photography. If you're going to past avatar images into a forest scene, green is probably the best backdrop color, even if there's green in the avatar clothing.

Regardless of background color choice, you'll get better cutout results if you take Hi-Res snapshots (selectable in the Advanced Menu) or set a very large custom snapshot size in the Snapshot window.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters