Originally posted by YoYoSpin
<br />Nice pics Kiddo...how do you process these photos to make the background invisible?
Well, First take very large picture. I use a Nikon Coolpix set to take 4megapixel shots. Large pictures edit better..
I use white sheet of paper for background and 2 or 3 photoflood (mercury) lamps.
Since white is almost always bad, first adjust color balance so background is white. Use curves adjustment. This makes rest of colors look proper as well.
Then zoom picture very large and use pen tool to draw path around pen. Digitizer helps lots here. I use Cintiq UX21.
Use convert path to selection tool with anti-aliasing on, and feather of 1 pixel.
Use <ctrl>C to copy selection.
Turn off original layer.
Create new layer with transparent background and paste pen onto it.
Create new layer with white background and move below pen on transparent background.
Resize image to 640xConstrain.
Select layer with pen and choose Layer-->Style-->Dropshadow. Adjust to nice unobtrusive shadow.
Select save for web and use JPEG Medium (about 60%) and save.
Save the full size image and layers as PSD file for other fun.
Fire up web browser and post sillyness to pen group.
Kiddo
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