So you’ve opened up Photoshop and you want to add a photo you’ve been given of someone, set against a white background, on top of the elaborate background design you’ve created, easy right? Well it would seem not so much, no matter how sophisticated Photoshop has gotten over the years the long and short of is that there is no one tool that can do a good job of this on its own.
For independent wrestling companies this is a problem that arises on a monthly and even weekly basis, as they are given promo photos from a range of sources and need to turn them into attractive promotional material for the events that they are running.
That’s where I can step in, over the last few years I have been continually improving my process of ‘cutting’ (also referred to as rendering) photographs to remove the background so that they can then be used in such design work, or for any other purpose. In these cases it’s important to have a real eye for the detail because it’s really easy to quickly cut something out and throw it on a background, but it’s just as easy to see the lack of quality that was taken in doing so.
As you can see, using the right method of ‘cutting’ has a huge effect on the final piece. This example only shows the very entry level of the problem, once you get into images with complicated backgrounds or elaborate hair things get even more tricky.
After doing small bits here or there and having my work used by a number of different independent wrestling companies I was contacted by Westside Xtreme Wrestling, Germany’s leading pro wrestling company, to cut out a set of almost a hundred photographs that they had taken at a recent event that they would need for promotional material going forward.
While I was happy to deliver the work in just under a week I was happier with the quality of the work I delivered as it’s my thought that the quality of this work helped towards the overall promotion of the events they are to be used for. This sentiment was echoed by my primary contact within Westside Xtreme Wrestling, who said;
As the leading wrestling promotion in Germany, we as wXw (Westside Xtreme Wrestling) were very pleased to find a graphic designer in Liam who was able to deliver quality work in record time for a fair price. We look forward to working with him again in the future.
– Dennis Birkendahl, Westside Xtreme Wrestling
Since completing the work wXw have used the cuts I created for them in a number of promotional materials, advertising events they were running as well as their new onDemand service. They have also been back in touch to cut further photos as their ‘go to’ for this kind of design based work.
One of the recent uses of these renders in wXw’s promotional material. In this example all of the renders used are ones which I had cut out.