Difficulty level: INTERMEDIATE

Shutter Stream and Shutter Stream 360 Product Photography Software include advanced image editing tools that enable users to remove backgrounds from product images. The lasso tool operates on the active layer of an image, and is used by clicking and dragging to trace the edges of a selection. This article will guide you to the process of using Shutter Stream's lasso tools: normal, polygon and magnetic lasso.

Step-by-step guide

Follow these steps in order to select and remove the parts you want from your image. In this example we will use an 'air balloon" image to explain the process:

  • Select your image and open it in the Edit window.

  • In the Editing window we have the lasso tool as shown in the image, the ? icon.

  • Select the lasso tool you want to work with: NormalLasso (or free form), PolygonLasso (draw straight lines) and MagneticLasso (most precise with powerful settings and options)

When using the Normal Lasso, using a graphic tablet and a pen can help achieve more precise lasso selection. Usually a mouse selection takes more time and it's not as effective as a graphic pen. 

In ShutterStream we have 3 different lasso tools that you can edit with:

Normal Lasso

In this example we are going to select and remove an unwanted part of the image using the normal lasso or free form lasso selection.

Tip

Use the Zoom In/Zoom Out icons in Edit window for a better closeup of your image.

Here we made a wrong selection, we are going to hit the Reset button then try again and make a new selection.

Now the selection looks better, we can now- right click with the mouse or simply press the Apply button to open the Lasso edit window.

As you can see, our selection turned into solid color white. We can choose Inside polygon to apply transparency or color inside our selection or Outside polygon to apply outside our selection.

Lasso Tools - Options Window

  • Inside polygon - use this to apply settings inside your selected lasso region
  • Outside polygon - use this to apply settings outside your selected lasso region
  • Solid color - here you can choose what color to apply on your selected lasso region
  • Alpha transparent - makes your selection transparent
  • Alpha opaque - this option gives you back the image content with all the pixels
  • Alpha custom - this a balanced option to choose between alpha transparent and alpha opaque using the slider.
  • Edge smoothness - a slider to choose between having a smooth or harsh lasso selection

In this case, we selected outside polygon option and alpha transparent to make the entire image transparent, but keeping our original selection intact.

Now hit the Apply button and save you final image with lasso settings applied.

Polygon Lasso

 

Polygon lasso is mostly used to draw straight lines and it's easier to select squares and rectangles than it is with the normal lasso tool.

Delete & Add Polygon Lasso Point

  • After you've made your polygon lasso selection, you can now double click with the mouse on any point to delete it
  • If you want to add new points, left click on the line to create a new polygon lass point


In this example we've selected a part of the image to change the color using the polygon lasso tool.

We selected our desired color, in this example is a dark green and now we need to set the Edge smoothness slider to 340.

This is the final result. Hit apply and save the edited image.

Magnetic Lasso

When opening MagneticLasso tool it will show up another settings window.

We have self-explaining tooltips so you can understand what

MagneticLasso Settings Info

Radius - How far (in pixels) should, at a min, consecutive lasso point be.

Min distance / Point-to-Point Distance - How far from mouse coordinate do we search for edge

Magnetic force - Increasing the lasso magnetic force, smaller edges will be prior to mouse pointer. Thus it refers to mouse point distance form high edges

Elasticity - This of the lasso tool it's actually an elastic rubber band. If you increase elasticity, it will become harder to bend and this will reduce "spikes" in the lasso line.

Now we've selected our "air balloon" image and try to make the outside selection fully transparent. You can play with the magnetic lasso until you find the right settings that applies to your image.

And this is the final result, edited in Lasso tool window:

If you are not satisfied with the results, you can reset/restore image, go back to the lasso tool and refine the edge selection.


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