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Extraction Techniques

Hi,

I'm familiar with PS, but I never got any grip on Image Extraction. I know PS has this built in (hotkey: ctrl + alt + x) but somehow that never works for me. At all. The Lasso Tool still gives me the best results but now I've come to a point where I need REALLY accurate extracting, and I simply can't pull it off anymore.

So: Do you guys know any resources for me concerning Extraction Techniques? It'd surely help me a lot.

Thanks in advance,

Gordon Freeman aka Krigu

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Really do smiles make your posts less retarded?

Are you using a mouse to do ur ps work?

If so and you really want to do fine adjustments etc then I would suggest you get a tablet and pen to et a little more control.

Will make a huge difference.

http://www.wacom.com/productinfo/intuos.cfm

You need the pen tool and lots of practise, alternatively the extract tool will do the trick but I always pen it.

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Any resources I could use?

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Really do smiles make your posts less retarded?

http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorial/pen/

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yah. i just recently discovered the extract tool. although.. i never use the pen tool. the extract tool is fairly easy, just play about with the brushes onit.

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Channels.

Channels allow you to look at, and adjust color information in super fine detail. With this information, you can effectively turn you image black and white using various tools available in PS, then, using the new channel created, (black and white) you can mask the original image, removing the background. This technique is especially effective when you need to extract around hair and other fine detail. The pen and extract tool just wont work in these types of situations (high detail situations).

See the example attached... although its is of somewhat poor quality, (due to compression) I was still able to make around the hair with some fine detail.

Once you are familiar with the technique, it takes very little time to create high detail maskes from your images.

here is a shot of the final mask. I adjusted curves, brightness/contrast and levels several times to achieve the final look. This was done on a duplicate channel that contains the most contrast.

Hey there,

I have a couple video tutorials on the pen tool and extracting images.

Take care, Hatch.

Extract video here:
http://www.wz2k.co.uk/v7/pages/downloads/downloads-inde ... at=Photoshop%20Video

Pen tool here: http://www.wz2k.co.uk/v7/pages/downloads/downloads-inde ... at=Photoshop%20Video

grubnubnub. can you provide some links on using channels, i would really appreciate it, i think channels is something i definately need to learn...cheers

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