If you are talking about rephotographing your coins, not editing out the background in P.S., maybe I can
help.
You might laugh, but I've started photographing my coins in a trash can
I bought a small white (translucent) office trash can to
help diffuse the light. I inserted a black pencil (black dowel will
work) into a 2 by 4 piece of
wood cut to fit the can. Covered the
wood and base of can with a piece of black velvet cloth.
This is roughly based on
Doug Smith's set up. The coin is placed on the flat end of the pencil, which gives about 9" of separation from the background. I covered the outside of the can, up to and level with the coin, with black construction paper, to minimize light reaching the background. That leaves about 4" from the coin to the top of the can, for the light to diffuse through. This combined with the separation distance from the back ground, are sufficient to remove any background detail.
I light the coin with 2 halogen desk
lamps, that I can place on the outside of the can where ever looks best. The can is rectangular, so I usually place the lights at the cornes for
max. diffusion, and one closer than the other. I took a piece of cardboard and covered it with aluminun foil, with a hole cut in the center for the lens to fit through, for a a cover on top of the can to reflect some light back to the surface of the coin to show better color on bronze patinated coins. This may not be needed with bright silver coins.
This set up was not very expensive! Lights $25 each, trash can $3, velvet cloth $2, the rest was just scraps and incidentals I
had around the house.
I use a Canon S3-IS with a macro feature. I would rather use my digital SLR, but don't have a macro lens for it yet
For some reason I keep spending all my
money on coins and
ref. books
Here are a couple examples of the results from the above set up.
I
hope this helps.
~Steve