Cutting out products with netting in Photoshop

What is a good approach in preparing images with netting for an e commerce site? Currently, we take product photos and painstakingly cut away the background and show the product with a white background. Lots of the products have netting like basketball nets, soccer nets, etc and other products have irregular shapes. Could this be automated by using a green screen background and doing some PhotoShop tricks? Are there better ways then the green screen approach?

 

I think you are right.You can set background color red,green or blue and the remove the background in editor.

Once i have read about light tent which is used for such need.

You can make a search for more information.

Thanks!

 

Well, we order a green/blue screen and will try Photoshop's Magic Wand or the saturation function to replace the green or blue background color with white.

 

why not simply take the photos against a white background if you haven't taken them yet?

am I overcomplicating things?

1) Shoot photos of nets on white background
2) do nothing
3) have photos of nets on white background

 

Well, it has to be just about a perfect white background. Using a white background would leave us with something slightly off from a perfect #ffffff white and there would tend to be shadows or non-distinct edges between white net and white background, etc.

Your method would be fine for me in a lot of circumstances but the standard for the industry is that perfect white background.

 

*cough* adjust levels in photoshop!

I'm in the industry buddy ;-)

 

Possibly blend the edges of the imperfect white so that it blends with your #ffffff page background. The blending should be easier then fixing the nets, and shadowing could be cool if you take all the images from pretty much the same angles.

 

You have to use the magic eraser tool and set the colors you want to erase, but set the product up with a background with colors that are not in the product.

Here is a video tutorial

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2352007/photoshop_magic_eraser_tool_extract_background/

works good for cutting out hair and stuff with lots of wholes, but only if the background color is a solid color

 

I agree with Innovati, use a white background and adjust levels/curves etc within Photoshop.

There are also a couple of other methods.

1. Make a custom light box

2. Purchase Vertus Fluid Mask which makes cutting intricate shapes/holes very easy.

 

Tier 1 sporting goods industry?

It would be cool but I need to keep things consistent with tens of thousands of existing images.

I checked it out and will make sure my staff use it along with their other techniques.

Vertus, looks slick, we'll give the trial a try.

 

Try shooting the trick parts larger and separately... If you shoot the netting parts from close up, it is easier to get something that looks good small... Green screen can be any color that's unique to the photo, sometimes there will be traces of this color left in the netting. If you make the netting desaturated, this imperfection will be less visible. I ahve done TONS of these and each situation requires a different variation of a bag of tricks. But experience equals good results and faster success, but there still is no escaping the time that will need to be invested...