Photo Isolation for the cheapskate - Part 2
5) Your white areas will very likely not look very white, so let's adjust them. Open up your curves by pressing ctrl + m or going to Image > Adjustments > Curves...
With curves still open, select the eyedropper tool (you can do this!) and sample a dark area that is not a shadow. Take note of the input level.
6) Now, grab the square in the top right hand corner and drag it to approximately the same x position (input) as the circle was at, but keep it at the same y position (output).
This step will be opposite if you're working with a CMYK image.
If there is still a lot of grey area, drag the box further leftto make the input a lower number until it looks good to you. The area that we whited out comes in handy here, because you can tell when your canvas is pure wihte.
7) So it's not quite perfect yet. To prevent the tomatoes from being totally washed out, I left the yellowy area in the bottom, and got rid of it carefully using a large brush with soft edges. I also cleaned up the foreground tomato's shadow this way.
Also, the tomatoes have strange-coloured shadows. To neutralize them, pick a fairly big brush with soft edges. Choose black or white as your foreground colour (it doesn't matter which) and lightly brush over the shadows until they are fairly neutral without being phony.
8) So here it is before and after!
This works best with darker objects and poorly with objects that are light, white or very shiny.
This tutorial was done in Adobe Photoshop CS2.