Best technique for isolating white fringes from white background?

[bilievesser]

I need to remove the background from this image. I usually don't deal with fringed edges like this, so my go-to tool for the job is the pen tool. What technique would be suitable for this image? Magic wand and other tools all give mediocre results so far, given the close relation of the white fringes against white background. I have the option as a last resort to shoot new pictures against a different color background, but am afraid that too would pose other problems.

Any and all ideas are greatly appreciated.

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

If it was me, I'd use the shoot-it-again filter, but if I had to work with this file, I'd use a steep curves to increase contrast to aid the Quick Selection tool, and do the best I could with the tassels.

The clean up the layer mask with the pen tool (working Counter Clockwise).

Make and define a horseshoe shaped brush to simulate the frills along the sides.  Angle jitter set to Direction, with a bit of size roundness and a tiny bit of angle jitter as well.

Adjust the angle of the brush.  You'll possibly need to do a test stroke of your work path to get they angle right.  It depends which angle your defined brush was.

I used FT on the work path to make it stand off the scarff, and stroked with white (I had the BG layer black at this stage to see what I was doing).

Stroke your path. Use a clipped curves layer to get the tonal value right, and maybe reduce opacity a touch.

You'll need to click top expand the screen shot to see it properly.  I would expect you to make a better job as you can see what the frills should look like.

[D Fosse]

Ah, in the two seconds I used to check if new posts had come in, and send off my own...

Well, between us you have something to choose from.

[D Fosse]

A colored background would just contaminate the white fringes. It would have to be dead black velvet.

If you use this, I would lift the white point so it doesn't look quite as muddy.

As for the mask, a combination of Quick Selection and manual inpainting in the mask should work well and not take too long. Put a steep curves layer on top while you work, to reveal the more obscure detail.

[JJLAPIN]

1. I to Cut a Path, Made a Layer Mask and then used the brush shown to take away from the mask for texture.

[SJRiegel]

JJLAPIN - your mask job looks good, but I'd lose that heavy drop-shadow - it detracts by making the image look unnatural.

[Trevor.Dennis]

SJRiegel wrote:

JJLAPIN - your mask job looks good, but I'd lose that heavy drop-shadow - it detracts by making the image look unnatural.

Yes.  If you are going to use a soft drop shadow like that, you really need to do it with two drop shadows and make one smaller and more dense.  

[bilievesser]

Thanks so much for all your input, I will be using a combination of all solutions going forward