Photo editing

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cncote10 Catalogue referee

Joined: 24 Oct 2012
Posts: 953

Posted: 17 Feb 2015, 04:55 #

Hey just out of curiosity how does one take a picture of a coin and then edit it so that no background is visible. I'd like to improve the photos for some coins that I own but I'm not sure how to take that step. Thanks!

derf

Joined: 11 Mar 2012
Posts: 1750

Posted: 17 Feb 2015, 04:59 #

Take the picture with a white background then use Gimp to circle crop it using the eclipse tool ..

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Do not argue with ignorant people .. !! They will drag you down to their level, then pulverize you with experience ...

MGakowski

Joined: 2 Jul 2014
Posts: 17

Posted: 17 Feb 2015, 14:03 #

You can even use paint.net and use the magic wand tool to select the background then press delete.

Penny for your thoughts?

Andy289

Joined: 12 Mar 2013
Posts: 1537

Posted: 17 Feb 2015, 14:39 #

In order to obtain high quality images of your coins it's good to take photos with a cromatic background. For example if you take a picture of a nickel coin on a green background surface then it will be extreamly easy to make the background transparent. I use photshop magic wand or for circular coin I use a hard circle brush.

Quant.Geek

Closed account

Posted: 17 Feb 2015, 15:10 #

Quote: cncote10Hey just out of curiosity how does one take a picture of a coin and then edit it so that no background is visible. I'd like to improve the photos for some coins that I own but I'm not sure how to take that step. Thanks!

derf is correct, however, using the eclipse tool in Gimp is only good if you have a circular coin that doesn't have rough edges, aka most modern coinages. Use masks and layers to get a very professional look. The first thing to do is use the fuzzy selection tool (magic wand) to select the background. This should mainly work on the full background. If you need to, increase the selection (Grow Selection) by 1 pixel. Afterwards, select the inverse and add a Mask by Selection (see Layer menu). Then add another layer (New Layer) by the background color you want. Finally, push the background layer DOWN and you should have a very professional looking picture and then save it away. This byzantine coin went through the exact same steps with my signature gray background. Notice that the rough edges were no problem and the eclipse tool can't handle this correctly: