I want to reproduce some small areas of a decal sheet, but need to remove the blue background on the scan of the original sheet. Which program/method is best for doing this?
Thanks,
stinger
You’ll need to use a program where you can fill and replace colors (such as Adobe Photo Elements or photoshop). The problem is you have to replace the color with another color. If you choose white, for example, than any white decals will appear totally washed out with a white background.
Good luck with that, it’s not easy to do, especially if the blue background isn’t a solid, uniform color.
Thanks for the info Scott. I thought it might be something like that. I have Adobe Photoshop 7.0, which is way too advanced for my abilities, but I may be able to figure it out.
Just in case you might know, what is the best procedure? Do I ‘sample’ the existing blue and then try to replace that color with white?
Thankfully, the only area I am trying to duplicate is black (the little surrounds and script on the footstep holes of a Bf109).
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
stinger
Ya, that’s what I would try first. You may have to sample a couple different spots to get all the blue replaced with white, especially if the program registers different shades of blue in the background.
First off, don’t be intimidated by Photoshop—Adobe writes the best documentation (although that is damning with faint praise.)
The best way to do this is to use the Magic Wand Tool. This tool has specific settings that determine how tight, or close, to the desired color the selection will be. Look it up in either the online help or the manual. Then experiment on a copy of your decal file. Once you are comfortable with the tool, proceed as follows.
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Create a new layer. Make sure that you set the options for no background. The new layer should have a gray checkerboard pattern in it.
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Select the colors of one decal. Do not try to select the background. For example, if you were doing a US national insignia, select all the colors within the decal: Blue interior around the star, white star, red bar. If you find you are selecting background, change the settings on the Magic Wand tool until it only selects the color you want.
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Copy the selected colors.
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Paste them into the new layer that you created.
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SAVE!
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Do the same with the rest of the decals.
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Save the new layer as a separate file, leaving your original scan unchanged.
That’s a great idea Ross, I’ll have to remember that trick! [bow]
I use Corel Photo Paint to remove the blue background from my decal scans. May be someone can convert my actions to Photo Shop.
I use the mask tool to select the color of the background, after that I cut the mask. I am left with all the colors except white on the page.
May be in Photo Shop you could use the magic wand to select the blue background and then delete it.
Photoshop also has a mask function.
The difficulty with selecting the background produced by some scanners, and some scan settings, is that the scanner reads textural variations in the paper as color differences.
Corel has an eyedropper so I can select the different tones in the blue to get an average, I can also select the tolorance, that way I get 99% of the blue background.
Thanks for all the suggestions folks!!
I’ve been messing with the different ideas, and have gotten to the point where I can sample the background color, but can’t figure out how to delete it or make that color transparent. I’ll keep trying after I get some sleep from working overnight (my real job, that is [;)]).
One other way I have found is to brighten the image, but I’m sure it still leaves some amont of blue behind.
Anyway, thanks again, and I’m still welcoming any new suggestions.
stinger