Difficult Background

[rich2005]

(01-10-2018, 10:26 AM)Rob1955 Wrote: I'm doing my first photo restoration, and have come across a problem. I know how to remove the background (sort of), but some of the subjects have helmets the same colour as the background, which is the problem

It is going to end up with a bit of artistic license. Removing background? Apart from the very simplest of image, I recommend using a layer mask. https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-layer-mask-add.html and https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Layer_Masks/

As an example:



I cropped the image, at this stage the border is just a distraction.

Adjust the image to get some idea of the helmet shape. The left side one is too far gone, guessed that one.

Painted in the outlines just because I wanted to use gmic interactive to get a mask (1). There are other ways, just paint one in, it is your project, worth spending some time on it.

Added the layer mask, and tidied it up. (2) Put in the copied layer (3) because the bottom of the image is dark and difficult to see, just there as a reference.

Clone in a bit of shading on the helmets, a bit of repair using resynthesizer/heal selection.

Always a good idea to add a neutral background, amazing the errors that are overlooked with transparency.

A 12 MB gimp file. just for reference http://www.mediafire.com/file/0e2arfgcn3...3-2.xcf.gz