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.

Extract makes quick work of this tree, though it does leave me a bit of cleaning up to do.

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.

: Marching ants surround the tree I'm about to extract using a mask.

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.

My tree is ready to place over a brand new background.

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Design, Graphic Design, INSPIRATION, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.