Years ago, some smart and wise developers created a plug-in called Eliminate White for Photoshop.

As a designer, I frequently need to Photoshop images for compositions and artwork that require removing the background in the images, so they can be combined with other images, colors, and text. When I was able to use the Eliminate White plug-in (pre Adobe Photoshop CS1), you could open an RGB image in 8-bit color mode, make a layer out of it, and then use the plug-in filter to strip all hints of white out of the image, leaving only the pixels with color and tone. Most often this was used when taking a photo of a model on a white backdrop, and getting rid of the white background so the person did not have a halo around them.

This was often a pain because models (unless they are bald) have hair, and hair is NOT easy to clone out of a background unless you leave the model looking as if they have a round head of hair!

Sadly, once Adobe started with the CS suite for Photoshop, the new software would not support the Eliminate White plug-in any longer.

However, I recently found a plug-in by Bergdesign, that is Freeware, and it does what the Eliminate White plug-in did! I contacted the Author of the plug-in, Brock Brandenberg, and and offered to send him some money for the plug-in development. He simply stated that he had used so many Freeware and Shareware plug-ins from others, he felt obligated to ‘give back’ to others. What a guy!

The images below show how the Bergdesign plug-in works, in comparison to doing background removal with Photoshop’s Magic Wand or Color Selector.

Below is a logo we recently had to remove an all-white BG from, shown here at 400% using the Magic Wand with a selection range of 15 pixels (notice how there is a white halo around the small copy and the small text characters are filled with white):

Next is the same logo, with the white BG removed, using the Color Select drop-down at 400%, set to a range of 100 pixels (again notice how the art is showing a light white halo):

Now the same logo, using the Bergdesign plug-in at 400% with all hint of the white background eliminated!:

The plug-in also removes Gray and Black backgrounds, as well as White. You can learn more at the Bergdesign.com website by clicking here. He shows additional samples of what this great, FREE, plug-in will do for you, and you can download it and try it out for yourself!

If you do happen to try this plug-in, and like it, be sure to leave some comments on this and Brock’s site! Good luck, and thanks again Brock!

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•