In need of Photoshop/Paint help

[Shadow 43]

Hey guys, Cheerleader here.

As many of you know, my video carreer has just started. My first video will be launched soon, but before that happens, I want everything to be perfect. That's where the problem comes in.

I'm reffering to my thumbnail and eventually my outro. With Photoshop (currently using c4) I remove backgrounds. The result will be editted in Paint most likely.

By using the ''quick selection tool'', You can, as the title says, quickly select the area you want without the background.

Very well, now I use Refine Edge which completely removes the background. (I left all settings at 0)

Now, I don't want to have this only. I want to have a background too ofcourse. But then... THIS HAPPENS

You see that? Look close. Yes, I'm talking about the white pixels surrounding the character. And now THIS is annoying. I don't want to have that. And removing it by just making it black would take forever and could eventually mess up the quality of the character.

This is where I need the help of you guys. For example, is there an easier way to remove this? Or is there a whole different method to remove backgrounds?

It really frustrates me. Thanks in advance.

[Fwiss 29]

This generally happens when you cut and paste, though it is slightly more common in jpegs because of compression artifacts. What is usually happening is that that stuff around the character isn't the same shade of white, e.g (254, 253 , 252) instead of (255, 255, 255). I know for a fact MS Paint can't counteract this without manual editing (which really isn't that hard, generally only takes a few hours straight, but as you observed it doesn't look as good). Now I'd think there'd be some setting in Photoshop's fuzzy select tool to set a threshold or theta-value or whatever you call it; basically a value that defines at what color it should stop selecting (such that lower thresholds select only around pixels with less deviation from those around them and higher values select pixels with more deviation in color). If you can find that setting (if it exists), you should be able to tweak it and find the right threshold value you need so that you get no white-looking outlines around it. Disclaimer, I have never worked with Photoshop. In GIMP, I know for a fact this tool and the setting is there.

P.S, Shadow: You might want to try out Paint.NET as a replacement to Paint. It doesn't have the long, complex structure of GIMP and Photoshop, but it's much better than Paint. It is also just about as easy to use as Microsoft Paint. Some of my personal favorite features of it are gridlines and the ability to move the cursor in precise, single-pixel increments using the keyboard.

[Shadow 43]

I tried out paint.net and it's going along pretty well currently, thanks alot for the tip :)

[Danny Felixe 330]

Personally, I hate using paint. It just seems so rubbish compared to paint.net and Photoshop

[឴ 13]

឴

Edited 5 Jan 2017 by ឴

[NeKit 6]

Don't diss Paint, it's useful for sprites and other "high-precision tasks", where you just don't need any of the fancy effects Photoshop provides. It's also lightweight (mostly, just don't make really huge canvases) and simple in interface. Not to say it doesn't have any annoying bugs (so much that I sometimes call it Pain instead), but it's an okay editor overall. (if we're talking about the one in seven, anyway. the one in xp is a buggy and inconvenient mess, gotta admit that)

I remember what troubles it brought when we were working on Sonic Rush translation. Though for the most part it was because you didn't use color picker to choose the right "white", but lack of transparency support is a huge minus.

[Danny Felixe 330]

I don't know how to do a direct reply from a phone. But I will say that I never used paint when I was younger whereas I used to do a lot with paint.net and then Photoshop. I still have some of the pictures I made using these programs. I only started to try out paint recently. The reason behind this is because I was still going to school and I there was no paint.net on the computers. So I tried using paint instead because it was lighter than Photoshop. I found it awkward to work with and overall, I couldn't do much with it. My lack of experience with this program may be the reason but I will stick to my original opinion which is, paint is a pain and I prefer using paint.net or photoshop.

[Delicious echidna 53]

It's easy, to go to the normal version on a mobile: Like I said, You have to scroll down in the main forum page, and click the "full version" button.

As for paint, It's merely useful for making simple things, like a wallpaper , or adding caption to a picture. But of course, there are also free specialised altrenative, if this is what you are searching for.