Hi All,

I have just joined the group, and started collecting vintage radios about six months ago. Here is a whole world that I was blissfully unaware of until recently, but now I seemed to be hooked.

My main interest is in collecting nice art deco style radios, both local and abroad. I prefer them working, but with some very rusty electronics skills from my distant past I have recently restored my first non working radio, a 1937 Emerson "Snow White" radio. So far I have a meagre 15 radios, which of course pales in comparison to some of the collections out there. Having some photographic skills I have published photos of my collection if any one is interested. Enjoy.

https://www.pinterest.com/damien0963/art-deco-vintage-radios/

Welcome to the forum.

You may not have many radios but you have pretty much covered the top desirable ones. Nice collection


ben

Interesting collection. Quite a few American sets there.

Great photography, too. How do you 'lose' the background?

How do you 'lose' the background?

I know this is a trick in Photoshop but I've never been able to master it. I wouldn't mind knowing the answer myself.

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone.

I like the Australian and American sets as they have a great diversity in design. They just look cool. There are some other sets from other countries too that I find interesting, so will hunt a few of them down over time as well.

To answer the question about "losing the background" ...

Photograph the radio on a plain background where the colour contrasts with the radio, white works in most cases. Ideally using two flash units with soft boxes on each side of the radio for nice even light.

The professional way to lose the background, is to light the background with a flash too, and it will turn white. No photoshop required

Or if you can't be bothered with the lighting setup, or dont have the gear, here is how in photoshop (I am using photoshop CC on a Mac, but should be similar for most recent versions)...

1. Select the "Quick Selection Tool" from the tool bar on the side, and paint the radio. This will start to select the radio automatically finding the edges for you most of the time. Pay attention the the edges though as sometimes it doesn't get all of it.

2. Click on the "Select" menu, and then choose "Refine Edge..."

3. This will now show what is not selected in red, and pop up a dialog. Click the "Smart radius" checkbox in the dialog, and select say 5 to 10 in the "Radius" box. This helps automatically work out where the edges are. Put somewhere between 25 and 50 in the "Smooth" box to take out any potential jagged lines. Click OK on the dialog.

4. Now your image goes back to just showing a selection around your radio. Click on the little "Add Vector Mask" icon that is usually found down the bottom of the layers panel (it looks like a rectangle with a hole in it), and boom, the background disappears.

5. Save the image as a jpeg and the missing background will be white, but you could add another layer of any colour beneath the current one if you wanted.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Damien

Thanks for those instructions!

Hear Hear. I am still on PS7 though so some of the functions maybe called something else. This was always a problem when using the tutorials of the great Photoshopper, Dr Thaddeus Ozone.

Well, this is spooky ...

I got a spam email tonight from some mob called iSkysoft (never heard of them) screaming: "Instantly Remove Background From Your Photos!"

The product being flogged is Photo Scissors. There's a user review of the Mac version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8FNXTiApEQ

Brigtfall, Welcome and really nice Collection there...

Yes GTC its really scary just how these advert companies are data mining and profiling us all still an email thats even scarier.. and you got to wonder how that was obtained.

I did a search on Tassie holiday and I was followed for weeks with adverts on tassie holiday...if thats what add companies can do I dont what to think about paranoid governments.

Cheers

That's all done by Google's hostile tracking cookies. They are the true enemy when it comes to spam.

Back in the early days of this website I ran Google's ad campaigns here and made around $100 per month out of it. After a few years the cents per clickthroughs dropped off and Google started off this targeted advertising BS.

One day they sent me an e-mail accusing me of following the ads myself (some people do this on their sites to gain extra revenue). Trouble was the ad banners got hammered by a flood attack here which I had little control over. It was at this time that I decided that the site would go commercial-free and since then I have maintained the opinion that sites without ads serve their visitors better and that any site hosting Google's ad banners were just in it to make a quick quid. I'll never go back.

Welcome my son!!! god speed another good radio man enters the hall ! good show !