Photoshop CS4: What’s New and What’s Missing in Masking
Author of this post: Tara MacKay | About Blog Authors »Extracting detailed objects from a background can be a tricky thing in Photoshop, particularly when dealing with fuzzy edges like hair, fur, and leaves of trees. The Quick Selection tool and the Refine Edge feature introduced in Photoshop CS3 go a long way, but there are more powerful solutions…
Personally, I’ve been a fan of the Extract filter for a while. With it, you use a “highlighter” to roughly define the edge of the object you wish to extract, and Photoshop comes pretty close to what you’re looking for. The results can be a little rough or jaggy, but usable or easily fixable in many cases.
Sadly, it seems Extract didn’t have too many fans… it’s not part of the CS4 release. But, if you have been a happy user of Extract in CS3, you can copy it from your CS3 plug-ins/filters directory and place it in the same directory for CS4. When you relaunch CS4, it will be sitting happily in your Filter menu.
An even better extraction of an object can be done with layer masks, which have always been a little misunderstood in Photoshop. In CS4, layer masks are a bit friendlier thanks to the new Masks panel.
Taking the same tree example, I begin by making a selection of the area I wish to extract. You can use any selection tool you like for this or a combination of them, same as any detailed selecting you routinely do. It’s OK if it’s a bit rough.
Now I head to the Masks panel and click the “Add a pixel mask” button. I immediately see the extracted tree and transparent background, and can carefully adjust the edges with the Feather slider and the Mask Edge button.
The beauty of this method is that you can modify the mask any time. Click on the black and white mask in the Layers panel, and your Masks panel will invite you to make any adjustments that you’d like.
I can’t entirely understand the loss of Extract in CS4, but layer masks aren’t quite so misunderstood for me now, and they will finally work their way into my regular Photoshop routines.























December 1st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
is there a book or something for beginning photo shop people?
thanks
December 7th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
what is the differences between CS3 and CS4?
I still use CS3 for my computer.
thanks
December 8th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
very interesting insight thank you for the heads up
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
thanks you for good information about masking
December 25th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Thanks for the information about masking layer’s and for solving the mystery of what happened to the extraction filter.
How long did it take you to get the hang of this new method and do you ever use the extraction filter anymore?