beginners advice needed

[tsolinas]

hi there

i am trying to photograph an action figure toy collection but i am having a lot of trouble.

first of let me say i have no photoraphy experience and didnt realise just how much goes into creating the right photo's

anyway, i have roughly 140 action figure which i am photography seperately, the aim is to put them all together into a poster but after photographing them all the backgrounds have turned out different shades so joining them together is impossible.

i have bought a photostudio and have a light at either side, the setup has not changed so it must be the camera settings, i have posted 3 of the pictures below and hope someone can point me in the right direction to the easiest way to achieve this, obviously if there is another way to do this such as removing the image cleanly from the background then this would enable me to create my own background and not have to reshoot the images but i am not very good in photoshop, i have tried the magic wand tool which does not extract the whole image and i have tried extract tool in photoshop whereby you draw the round the edges but its not very accurate, there must be a way to cleanly extract the image from a background.

http://www.sithvault.myby.co.uk/image1.JPG

http://www.sithvault.myby.co.uk/image2.JPG

http://www.sithvault.myby.co.uk/image3.JPG

[paulmag]

I would use a white background I think that would make it easier to manipulate later

[Bandit]

Go for a white backdrop and bounce the flash from the ceiling. A bit of PP in Photoshop and bingo..sorted :ok:

[canonman]

In Photoshop CS3, there is a fantastic method specifically with this purpose in mind.

Go to "filter"......."extract". Your image will re-load on a separate window with its' own set of tools.

It is very much self-explanatory from there on. By picking up the first pen (top left of the palette) adjusting the nib size to suit, then draw around the outline of the image. The outline needs to overlapping the background and the image by equal amounts. Also at this stage (if applicable) paint onto any fine detail you wish to retain like hair or tree branches etc. Then use the paint tin tool to fill the hollow left by the outline you have drawn.

Preview the image, then using the other tools, you can clean up accordingly, both removing any background that may be left, or painting back pixels that have been removed in error.

Hope this helps, your images would be very quick (around a couple of minutes each ) to extract as the outlines are clearly defined and hard.