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I was wondering if there's a good way to extract an object that's net-like with many holes. For instance, a supermarket trolley:
Quick Selection and Magic Wand in Photoshop can select the outer background, but not the holes so easily. Is there a good way for select the holes?
Try making a layer mask for it, using the photo itself: desaturate it, adjust the contrast and levels, perhaps some repainting of the thinner lines, and filling in of lighter areas to black, then invert it to create a mask. Once done, you can use the Select and Mask functionality to refine the mask further.
Something like this:
I guess you haven't a photo from where the background is already removed and maybe replaced with white like in your example.
If you have a high resolution photo, you can draw a clipping path. Drawing it is much work because there can be for ex. 200 holes and everyone of them needs a subpath. Some of them can be made with boolean operations i.e. you have a big hole and you subtract from it long bars. One bar needs only four clicks with the pen tool, if the bar is straight.
A better way is to shoot the photo so that background removal is easy. Have a sturdy camera stative and take 2 photos - a normal one and a silhouette, only change the light between them. Use some anti-gloss spray to prevent glosses, because multiple reflections can spoil the silhouette. Use timed shooting to avoid moving the camera.
The silhouette image can be edited quite easily to high contrast BW and used as a mask for the normal image. I have photographed hundreds of products with this method.
You need studio-like environment with a big white background and controllable lights. Flat led panels can be used as a low cost lighted background for small items, but big enough for your trolley isn't cheap.
