Fire photo: Get a white background in 3 steps
Posted December 10th, 2008 by Luke | 3,655 views
Occasionally for a print or website, you might require images with a white background. Usually these are easy to find, take or mask yourself, but for some things it can be more difficult.
Fire is one example. It would be very difficult to try and mask out flames from a fire photo using the pen tool or a brush, because of the organic shapes and indistinct edges.
As you will see in moment, it doesn’t have to be difficult. Using blend modes and layers, it’s very easy! So easy that I’ve turned it into an action which you can download at the end of the article if you so desire.
One
Take or find a photo of some fire (other images with a similar black background might work too – let me know in the comments if you’ve found something else on which this technique works!)
I started out with a rather nice Creative Commons licensed photo found here on Flickr.
Two
In Photoshop, you should have the default “background” layer. Duplicate it and call it something like “inverted”. Then, do just that – invert the image (CTRL + I)
Now set this “inverted” layer to the “Luminosity” blend mode.
As you can see, the whites of the fire have been dulled and it doesn’t really look very fiery. We’ll fix that in the next and final step.
Three
Duplicate the “background” layer again and drag it above the “inverted” layer. Rename it something like “Lighten”.
Finally, set this layer to the “lighten” blend mode and that’s it. You should have a nice white background on your fire photo.
10 Responses to “Fire photo: Get a white background in 3 steps”
March 25th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Incredibly useful tip, really simple to do. Great Job. I need to do more research on what else blend modes can do.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:25 am
Wow. That’s really cool. Do you know if there is a way to do this in The Gimp? I haven’t found a layer mode in The Gimp that gives me an effect like the “luminosity” mode in Photoshop.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Great tutorial.
Reading the first lines I thought: “this is going to b useful, but hard.” Matter of fact it is simple..
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
thanks so much this was so useful, much appreciated!
June 8th, 2009 at 12:56 am
it wont let me choose luminosity?
June 9th, 2009 at 12:10 am
i love it!!!!
August 17th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Instead of doing all that pointless shit, u could just have used blending mode and used screen. You will get exactly the same effect as this douchebag got!
August 17th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Did you actually try that? It doesn’t work.
September 25th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
what a wanker, great work thx for the tip i’m having trouble installing the button i don’t understand how it works
October 21st, 2009 at 10:05 am
I Love It. A really useful tip. Like Matthew I need to see what other things blend modes can achieve. Do you not think that fire feels more… Atmospheric on a black background – not being rude.
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