Best Practices & Most Common Mistakes — How to Prepare a Photo for Background Removal
The process of removing backgrounds can be a tedious and time-consuming task that is required in many photography projects, even those with potentially legitimate images. Through not properly prepared photos, corrections are sometimes necessary, which have to be done manually, or semi-manually.
In this article, we will give you some key things to pay attention to when preparing photos for background removal, and show you in what cases this process can go wrong. These tips will allow you to remove backgrounds from your photos quickly, efficiently and without problems.
Contrast
High contrast between foreground and background gives better results than low contrast. It is worth ensuring that the photos are taken in good lighting conditions.
Prefer plain backgrounds
Backgrounds with a single-color are easier to remove than backgrounds with many details.
Sharp foreground
The foreground should be sharp and the edges of the objects should be clear, otherwise, the out-of-focus parts may be removed. If only the edges are blurred, they will still be blurred in the cutout, which may or may not be a problem.
Objects
Objects held in the hands or worn on the body are usually supported, while large protruding objects can be problematic and may be removed.
Whole object
It's important that the entire product be visible in the photo, this means it can't be cut off, obscured, or shaded. The AI will still remove the background, and if you use the background replacement option, AI might even draw a missing part of the object. But this is not 100% sure method.
Object in focus
Place the subject in front of a smooth, uniform background (photo studio, wall, floor). This will give you a good indication of the shape of the object to be cut out.
Shadows and reflections
Try to avoid shadows and reflections because they can be mistaken for part of the foreground. This will result in a wrong definition of the object's shape.
One of the best tools for automatic background removal is Deep-image.ai. This app is powered by artificial intelligence. In the article, we described in detail how the Deep-image.ai background removal tool works, using portrait photography as an example:
-> https://medium.com/deep-image/best-tool-for-removing-background-from-portrait-photos-bf24c95f5b51
Conclusion
There are many different background removal tools on the market, but even the best of them will not achieve the desired results if the base photos are not appropriate. For this, it is so important to keep in mind those variables we have given.
