Background

[Mintaka]

A question for the clearly very accomplished photographers that post on these forums, if I may.

Most of the excellent micrographs that I've seen here have particularly clear and uniform backgrounds, so that essentially only the critter of interest is visible. In contrast, my own attempts typically show the little creature claustrophobically surrounded by a clutter of undesirable dirt, broken rotifers, sediment, sigaret ends, dead cats, discarded milk cartons etc.

Is there a way of cleaning up the background a bit, either through sample preparation or electronic wizardry after the fact?

Many thanks.

[Crater Eddie]

I have wondered about the dead cats in your photos, but hesitated to ask about them.
CE

[Mintaka]

I have wondered about the dead cats in your photos, but hesitated to ask about them.
CE

Ah yes ... that's merely an occasional side effect of my collection methods.

[JimT]

I clean the background after the fact with Photoshop. I use the spot healing brush tool for simple cleanup. For dirtier backgrounds I use Gaussian blur and a layer mask. I also brush the dead cats off the slide during preparation

[Mintaka]

Thank you JimT for the advice. I tried it out in Photoscape. The spot healing went very slowly, so I tried applying mosaic on the background around this embryo. That certainly got rid of the spots and stuff, but it left the edge of the object looking a bit strange, so I blurred the mosaic blocks around it. I think it improved the image a lot. Below is the original and my editing attempt. Thanks again!

[JimT]

Very very nice! You can "trim" the top with the clone stamp or just crop it out.

[vasselle]

Bonjour.
J'utilise Lightroom 5 pour mes photos au microscope.
Et je m'en sert pour enlever les petites taches genre de la poussière sur optique.
Sinon pour les petits spécimens je me sert d'une loupe binoculaire pour triller et je prend celui qui parer le mieux ensuite je le met sur une lame bien propre.
Comme ça je suis débarrasser de toutes saletés.
Cordialement seb

[Mintaka]

Thanks for the advice, Seb. It makes sense that an isolated organism on a clean slide should indeed be first prize in the run up to a nice photograph. My usual scoop,drop'n'plop sample prepping end up too concentrated, or at least it often appears that way. I'll try and achieve intitial (or REAL) cleanup through dilution of the sample, and also do some "sorting" under a stereo scope first. Then polish the image off with the virtual brushes. (To this end, I've downloaded a program called GIMP this morning, which is, according to reviews, capable of manipulate layers, as per JimT notes.)

[vasselle]

Oui des fois il faut passer avec un petit tamis échantillon eau pour enlever les petits saletés.
Comme ça ton échantillon eau a moins impuretés,et les observation seront plus propre.
Gimp il est super aussi bien que Photoshop je les aussi Gimp.
Mes par contre si tu fait tes photos en raw ou en tiff 16 bit comme moi je fait pour mes photos, Gimp ne te les accepteras pas car il travail juste sur du JPG 8 bit.
Et du JPG 8 bit n'est pas trop conseiller pour les retravailler car tu risque avoir des cassures au niveau des tons.
Mes si tu le fait il faut vraiment il y allez en douceur.
Car pour mon APN Canon PowerShot A550 j'ai mis CHDK justement pour pouvoir shooter en RAW car la plage dynamique est plus étendue que le JPG .
Idem pour ma camera Bresser MicroCam 3,0 MP je shoot en TIFF 16 bit.
Car normalement on ne retravaille pas un JPG on utilise juste pour archiver les photos.
Cordialement seb

[Mintaka]

Many thanks Seb for the information.

[vasselle]

Bonjour Mintaka.
Pour te faire voir ce que le peux faire avec GIMP, je me suis permis de reprendre ta photo pour te faire voir ce que l'on peux faire pour redonner un fond bien propre.
J'ai simplement pris le lasso fait un découpage de l'objet et mis un fond blanc .

Voici ta photo avec le fond bien propre.

z6-vert.jpg (91.84 KiB) Viewed 6375 times

Si tu autre question hésite pas.
Bonne observation .
Cordialement seb

[Mintaka]

Yes - that's exactly what I'm after! I'm glad it can be done with GIMP. I'll certainly experiment a bit. Thanks again for the pointers!

[The QCC]

You may be interested in this Background Subtraction Toolkit developed expressly for microphotographs.
Download
and
Usage

[JimT]

Mintaka, you can do almost anything with GIMP that you can do with Photoshop so try it and good luck. My only complaint with GIMP is the learning curve and that the UI is not as good as PS - MHO.
Keep us posted with your experiences.

[Mintaka]

Thank you, The QCC for the links. This thread has proved immensely fruitfull on putting me on the path to a clearer background, and I do appreciate everyone taking the time to give me all these pointers. Now all that remains is to practice, practice, practice!