BG ELIMINATION  

Background Elimination Action for Photoshop 6 or 7
by Midnite

Q: What is Alpha Strip?

A: One Thing I keep telling my I-comix artists is how to eliminate a background in a poser picture. I think I've finally solved this problem with an actions file I named ALPHA STRIP. With this action you can safely eliminate those pesky backgrounds from any PSD or Tif file that was rendered in Poser. Of course you have to remember that this applies only to the original file that was rendered in Poser and saved as a tif or psd file. Jpeg files won't work, because they don't save the Alpha Channel info that is necessary for this whole operation to work right.

Q: Why do I need this?

A: Well if you don't mind spending a lot of time trying to eliminate backgrounds for compositing, or for saving transparent files for animated gifs or Flash, then I suppose you don't, but, with this method, not only is it better than trying to select the BG with the magic wand, but it does it in about a second's time and also preserves the transparency of the poser objects.

For Instance, let's say your character is wearing a semi-transparent outfit, like Goldie (Actionbabe). Selecting the background with the magic wand, or worse yet, just trying to erase it, will not leave her outfit parts that stick out away from her body as transprent. They will still have the background color in it. Saving the file as a PSD or TIF file saves the transparent info in the Alpha Channel of the picture, hence the name. ALPHA STRIP gets rid of this background without compromising the original picture or transparency information.

Q: How do I use it?

A: STEP1 - Download the Action and Paste it into your Photoshop directory.

Simply download the action >> CLICK HERE << and save it to your photoshop directory as shown below.


figure1


STEP 2: Load ALPHA STRIP into Photoshop.

Open up Photoshop and pull up your Actions Pallete. (this can be found under the Windows pulldown menu under "Actions" or "Show Actions") In the Actions Pallette at the top you will find a small arrow at the right. Clicking this will bring up a small menu. Drop down to the section of this menu which says "load actions".


figure 2

If you've pasted the action file into the proper directory as shown in figure 1, this should show up as "Alpha Strip". Click on it, and it will automatically load into your photoshop program to your actions pallette.

STEP 3 - Open a Tif or PSD Poser picture in Photoshop

Almost Done! All we have to do now is load our Poser render (tif or PSD) into Photoshop. Once it loads in, we will see it in the layers pallette as "background" and is locked.

STEP 4 - Eliminate that Background, Bubba!

Go to the actions palette and select "Alpha Strip" - (select the top layer with the arrow next to it.) This will enable the buttons at the bottom of the pallette. Simply click the right arrow (play) button (shown above) and the macro will magically eliminate (delete) your background and leave you with your picture intact. It will also have renamed your layer to "Layer 0", and unlocked it.

STEP 5 - SAVE!

Save your picture (you may want to "save as" under a different name) and you're done!