I have a friend who asked me to take pictures of packaged exotic meats for her web site. She just wants the product/packaging with nothing around it so when she puts it up on her page, there isn't a white or colored box around the product. I shot on a black background so it would be easy to eliminate but I don't know what exactly to do in Photoshop so the final image is just the package. Any help would be very appreciated!
create a new layer and make sure the background is transparent. Then go back to the first layer, select all the black and delete. Then flatten or merge visible.
A friend of mine is a graphic designer and he uses the Lasso tool to go around the product and then simply cuts it into a new image. I have watched him do it and tried it myself. It is quite a slow painful process for me, but he can fly through it in no time.
I am sure there may be an easier way, but this is how I have seen it done.
There's no such state as "transparent" in a flattened image. You'll either need to crop away the excess, or, if it's not rectangular, select the interior part you want, create a Path, and set that to be a "clipping path" -- then save in EPS or TIFF format.
When I flatten it, the edges around the package go to white; it doesn't stay transparent. Am I doing something wrong?
Hmmm... I created the 2nd layer, then simply deleted the original background layer (i.e. I didn't attempt to flatten it, the layer on which I deleted the background was simply the only layer left). Then you can save it as .GIF or .PNG or .TIF or .PSD and it will keep the transparency. But I think if you save it as a regular jpeg then it will lose the transparency.
Don't I need to "Save for Web" since it will be going on her web site? Or do I not?
Probably. In this case I'd save for Web and save as a PNG-24 file. It will have full color depth and retain it's transparency. Remember to save your PSD file just in case you need to save in another format.
