Create Perfect On-White Isolations With Photoshop

by ShawnaR (follow)

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Time: 1-5 minutes

Materials
digital photograph with a white background
Adobe Photoshop


Method
If you shoot microstock, product, or advertising photography, chances are you have attempted to make ‘on white’ or ‘isolation’ photos. This easy 3-step process will show you how to create perfect isolations in Photoshop even when your ‘white background’ isn’t all that white (it must at least be ‘whiteish’ for this technique to work).

Before you get into the tutorial aspect of this article, it should first be mentioned that the best solution to making great isolation photos is to learn how to use light and get it right in camera. This will greatly reduce the time you spend in post-production cleaning up the photo. However, everyone knows that you can’t always ”get it right”. The following example is a photo taken on a shoot where there were 19 puppies who needed to be photographed and only about two hours of shooting time. It was chaos! Needless to say, making sure the backdrop was a perfect #FFFFFF white was not the first priority.



Open your image in Photoshop. Isolating the subject is the first thing you want to do. Once you have a perfect isolation, any other desired touch-ups can be made.


Once the subject has been selected, right click > select inverse. Press the delete key. A pop-up window will appear. Be sure that you have the ‘contents’ set to ‘use white’ and the ‘blending mode’ set to ‘normal’ at 100% opacity. Click ‘OK’.






Now use your brush to brighten the areas of the photo that are supposed to be white. Don’t worry if you happen to go over your subject a bit. The dodge tool is meant for this but you don’t want to overdo it. If you find that you are blowing out portions of your subject, you may wish to lower the exposure setting.



As you move in closer to your subject, you will want to make your brush size smaller for tighter areas. You may also want to reduce the exposure if you are working on a photo with fine details around your subject (like whiskers or hair).

Sometimes certain areas around the edges of the subject can become oversaturated.



This is an easy fix with the ‘sponge’ tool. Set your brush to the desired size, set the mode to ‘desaturate’ and set your flow to about 50% to start. Sponge over the oversaturated area until it looks natural.






Once you are happy with your isolation, save your photo and then continue to edit as needed.

Happy editing!




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