GIMP Version: 2.6.11
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: XP - SP3
GIMP Experience: Beginner Level

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Hello Gimp community,

I hope someone here might help me find a simple efficient workflow for this set of pictures. I have taken a series of poultry-photos from a hobby breeders exhibition, which I need to edit for a book on poultry breeds. For the photos I rigged up a simple cage with a white paper background - however, with the materials at hand we had to accept some visible seams and cracks between the sheets of paper. I promised to edit it out in post-processing.

I can do this image-by-image with the clone brush and lots of patience. However, I have the feeling that there ought to be some short cuts if only I knew my way around Gimp a bit better. Of course one option would be to simply select all of the background and fill it out with uniform white (or select the birds and then inverse and flood the background). That might be the right approach. But... if I could instead selectively eliminate the seams and cracks between the sheets, while keeping the natural gradient in the white papers and also the shadow of the bird, I have the feeling this would produce a more satisfying result.

Anyway, I thought I might try posting it here just to see what the collective genius of the board community might suggest... Thanks for any ideas - and feel free to try out stuff. I will add a link to one of the birds in my dropbox public folder:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10485935/TestHane.jpg

Welcome to Gimp chat MetteHHH. I'll try and help you as far as my expertise goes which is limited.

This would be easier if you had a solid color background but here's what I did. I downloaded your pic into gimp, right clicked the layer and added an alpha channel. I then used the fuzzy select tool to erase as much of the background as I could around the rooster.



Then take the eraser tool set pretty small to go around all the edges then larger to clean up the larger areas.





I added a black layer for a background to make every little artifact show up so I could remove it.

I then used the brush tool set to color erase and set the foreground color to white. I used a fuzzy cirle brush to carefully go around some of the edges to get rid of the white shadowy edges.



After I had it all cleaned up, I changed the background layer to white and added a drop shadow, used the perspective tool to make it look like it was leaning away, blurred it a couple of times, and lowered the opacity to around 30%. I moved the shadow layer into position and lastly created a separate transparent layer above the shadow layer to paint in a few shadow adjustments, just around the feet, with the airbrush tool and a fuzzybrush set to about 5 or so.



I could not include the xcf file here because it was way too big. You can save the image as a png and then add any background you like to the image like so.



I don't know of any way to batch process all your pics unless, like I mentioned, they all had a solid color background. Hope this helps.

you could try the rggjan fork from Partha's site site to remove the background

First time I've heard of that one. I'll have to check it out. Can't really tell, but it looks like there are still artifacts around the legs. Still a lot faster than doing it the hard way like I did. LOL

Edit: Looked on partha's site and it appears to be for gimp 2.7.4 portable. I'm assuming it won't work for 2.6.11.

i forgot to lower the start percentage before running it , it might have done a better job around the legs

That is actually an entire Gimp program (Gimp-2.7.4 Portable), with the new foreground select tool.
This one works with transparency so it is rather nice.It's the reason i use it and Gimp-2.6.11 only now.

This was actually a great candidate for the threshold tool.



Just duplicate the image - desaturate the duplicate (colors>desaturate with average ticked seemed to be best.
Then run Colors>Threshold and keep the white far to the right and move the black slider in to the right until you just start to see the bottom shadows start to form, then back off a bit.
Then you just need to select the black - grow by 2 pixels and go to select feather by default which is 5.Then copy paste to another layer.
That seems to be the fastest way to do it.

Very cool Rod. I just learned something else.

You guys are brilliant! Thanks!

Rod: I will definitely try the threshold tool, looks like a great time saver to other selection methods, and perfect for the white background setup.

Draconian: Using a black layer at the end to highlight artifacts is also a very useful tip, thanks!

alc59: The new foreground selection tool looks very promising. I look forward to getting to know that one.