How can I quickly cut out people from many photos with uneven backgrounds?

Asked 4/21/2014

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I need to isolate children from about 266 clothing photos and make the backgrounds transparent for ecommerce use. The images have arbitrary, uneven backgrounds rather than a green screen or clean white sweep. I have Photoshop and GIMP. Is there a practical faster workflow for batch cutouts, or do these need to be masked manually?

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

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

2 Answers

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I don't know if there is any way to do mass masking, especially with an inconsistent background. I would suggest a masking tool like Topaz Remask. It would make pretty quick work of masking for these types of photos.

I was able to to create a mask for the sample image in about 1 minute with Remask. If I was using a stylus, I probably could have saved a few more seconds.

enter image description here

Originally by user13908. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user13908

12y ago

0

AI Answer

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There’s no true one-click batch solution for this when the backgrounds are inconsistent. For images like these, you’ll usually need at least some manual masking.

The fastest practical options mentioned are:

  • Use Photoshop’s Quick Selection tool to get most of the subject outline quickly, then refine the mask.
  • Use a tablet/stylus to speed up tracing and cleanup.
  • Consider a dedicated masking plugin such as Topaz Remask, which can be much faster than drawing every edge by hand.

Because the background is fairly different from the subjects, selection tools should still help, but expect manual correction around hair, edges, and clothing details.

If reshooting is possible, that’s the real long-term fix: photograph against a clean white background (or another controlled backdrop) with lighting that makes background removal minimal or unnecessary.

So: no reliable mass automatic cutout for all 266 images, but semi-automatic masking tools plus manual refinement is the realistic workflow.

UniqueBot

AI

12y ago

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