Created February 20, 2003 © Copyright Moon's Designs
Property of Moon's Designs
This is my creation, any similarity to other tutorials on the Internet is unintentional.
Please do not copy or place this tutorial or any graphics to any other place without written permission directly from me. Thank you.

The background eraser is a new feature in PSP8. I think this, along with some new features in the Selections-->Modify menu, is going to be a god-send for tubers. This tutorial will show you just some of the things that you can do with the Background Eraser for tubing.

You will find it much easier to use the background eraser if you have Precise Cursors set. Go to Files-->Preferences-->General Preferences and click on the Display and Caching Tab. Make sure you check Use precise cursors and show brush outlines.

First, I would like to share with you some of options that the BGE Tool Ribbon offers, what the different settings mean and what they can do for you.

	Shape - you can use any shape, however I recommend the default round shape.
	Size - Any size is fine, however it does depend on how large of an area you are working with. I change the size of the brush frequently.
	Hardness - 100
	Step - 5 If you have a higher step you don't sample the image colors often enough; lower tends to make the brush a lot slower.
	Thickness - 100
	Rotation - doesn't really matter
	Opacity should be set at 100
	Tolerance - I tend to have auto tolerance checked most of the time. The brush will automatically determine the best tolerance from the colors under the center of the brush. Even though it is greyed out, the tolerance control will update the number so you can use the number as a starting point for manual adjustment, if you so desire.
	Sampling Once means the sampling is done at the start of the stroke only. This is useful with a uniform background and allows you not to be careful about following object edges.
	Continuous is sampling throughout the stroke.
	Contiguous means that the background color will be erased only where it forms a continuous connection to the center of the brush. This tends to preserve object edges better than Discontiguous and is recommended where the color inside an object is similar to the background color.
	Find Edges is useful if the object and background color are similar.

Now that you have all of that information, let's do a little work with the background brush.

My tutorials are only guidelines to help you accomplish a certain creation. Please feel free to be inventive and take whatever liberties you would like. I encourage each of you to do your "own thing" and make your creation yours! Your finished creation is yours to do with as you please.

Screenshots are resized and compressed for faster loading. Don't forget to SAVE your work often.

This tutorial is written in and for PSP8 and assumes you have a working knowledge of PSP.

FOR THIS TUTORIAL YOU WILL NEED:
JASC's PSP8 (30 day free trial) - You can get it HERE
A graphic ~~ The graphic I used is one that was taken by my friend Irene at her house - it is a Day Lily that she has in her yard. If you would like to use this same graphic, please right click and save to your hard drive.

Step 1:
Open your graphic in PSP. Go to Windows-->Duplicate (Shift+D) to duplicate your image. Close out your original. The reason for doing this is in case you want to use your image again, this way you won't be saving on the original.

Step 2:
Activate you background eraser. You will find the eraser on your toolbar.

Step 3:
In order to use your background eraser you must have your graphic as a layer. Go to Layers-->Promote Background Layer. If you don't do this when you click on your graphic you will receive an auto alert. You can either say okay each time, or click on the Always take these actions and then click OK.

Step 4:
Click on your canvas with the center of the brush close to the edge of your object. The center of the brush is the "always" erase. You never want the center of the brush to go over the "keeper" area.

Start clicking around your "keeper" area until you have the background erased from your object.

*Tip - If you have a large area of background that you want to erase, hold down the space bar and click that area.

*Tip - If you erase part of your object in error, right click on the area to replace what you erased in error.

**TIP~~ ZOOM in on your image. It will make seeing your object and erasing a LOT easier.

Step 5:
Once you have erased around your object, you will probably have a few "stray" pixels. An easy way to remove these is to use the new feature in Selections-->Modify called Remove Specks and Holes. The first thing I do is add a new layer and move it to the bottom, I then flood fill with a color that will show stray pixels. Depending on my graphic, I usually use a bright pink color.

Let's get rid of the stray pixels.

Step 6:
Make sure you are on your graphic layer that you have been erasing. Go to Selections-->Select All (Ctrl+A). Selections-->Float (Ctrl+F) Selections-->Defloat (Shift+Ctrl+F). Selections-->Invert. If you do not defloat you will receive an Action Alert when you invert stating that you must defloat first. Go to Selections-->Modify-->Remove Specks and Holes

I used the following settings, please experiment until you find the setting that is suitable for your graphic.

Click OK and press your Delete Key. Your stray pixels have been removed. Keep selected and Save.

Step 7:
This particular graphic had a white edge around the flower - I'm not sure if it was Irene's camera or if that's the way the flower was, but I wanted to removed it. While still having my graphic selected I went to Selections-->Modify-->Feather Inside/Outside.

I used the following settings, again experiment and see what is going to work best for your graphic.

Click okay and either hit your delete key about 5 times or click your scissors 5 times. Deselect and Save.

You can either now delete your bottom layer with the horrendous color ~winks~ or you can do more editing on your graphic.

I just wanted to give you the basics on how to use some of the new features in PSP8.

If you have any problems, comments or questions please do not hesitate to E-mail me.

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If you would like to use this tutorial for group settings, please contact me. Just click on the above mail slot *S*

Tutorial written and created by Patti Wavinak for Moon's Designs. These Tutorials are copyrighted by law. You may LINK to them only. You may not remove any of the graphics, zip files or html within these pages to reproduce these Tutorials, without the expressed permission of Moon's Designs. These pages may not be removed from this website and sent via e-mail, nor saved, stored or archived in files in YahooGroups or other mailing list sites, nor may they be translated and placed on another site.
Creations made from these tutorials are your creations.
Moon's Designs holds the copyright to all selections, original tubes and original images that I have created and provided for use within my tutorials. Page backgrounds and images are created exclusively for this website and may not be downloaded or used without written permission.
If you would like to use any of my tutorials for group lessons please contact me.

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