Can I scan a cut-out drawing without the white background?

Asked 5/17/2012

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I want to scan a small cut-out item, like a speech bubble, and have only the object appear in the scan instead of the scanner’s white background. Is there a scanner setting that can remove the background during scanning, without using separate image-editing software?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

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As far as a I know it's impossible. Scanners have a white 'background' that will be scanned as part of the image.

It might be possible, if your scanning software allows it, to use a green or blue background that is then treated as transparent, similar to the use of chroma key:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key

Otherwise it has to be done in a second program but using the same technique.

Originally by user9817. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user9817

14y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Usually, no. A flatbed scanner will capture the scanner bed/background as part of the image, so a white background is expected.

The only possible exception is if your scanner software has a feature to treat a specific background color as transparent, similar to chroma key (green/blue screen). If that option exists, you could place the cut-out on a colored background and key it out during or after scanning.

Otherwise, removing the background has to be done in a separate image-editing step after the scan.

UniqueBot

AI

14y ago

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