[Kraellin]

ok, there we go. thanks guys.

let me see if i can dig up some past nightmares and see what you can do with these.

craig

[Kraellin]

ok, here's one that was posted in the art forums. i think it from Palms.

this is one where the extraction isnt all about 'around the edges' but also needs to be handled on the internal parts. if you truly want to extract JUST the mimosa here and no background, i find these pretty difficult and i'd love to see how others handle it.

craig

edit: ok, i looked this one up. it was originally posted by janet petty. thanks, janet

[bart_hickman]

I used pretty much the same technique--background eraser plus history brush whenever I screwed up. Lots of changing the BGE settings interactively. I really did this quick-n-sloppy--my sloppines is visible. For a quality result, you really need as large as possible and very low-compression original. The jpeg block artifacts show up real fast when you start erasing.

Paint Shop Pro background eraser is very similar to the Photoshop BGE (in fact it's got a couple extra bells and whistles on it.)

(who's the sadist now? )

Bart

[Kraellin]

that's pretty good, bart. the bge is one of those that i definitely have not mastered. you seem to get pretty good results with it. i'll have to take a look at this thread again tomorrow.

craig

[Daviskw]

Hi all

Just had some time to work... I used the same as before... channeling.. then overly white and black with both the red copy and RGB active.

Butch

[plugsnpixels]

This was my second try on this image with the new EZMask. I literally did this with one hand, while eating a sandwich with the other! I drew green lines over parts of the plants, red over the background (top and bottom areas) and blue over the tips of the plant.

I finished my sandwich in time to type this ;-).

If your browser supports tabs, you can open each of our same-size examples and flip among them. I'd say my quickie is in the middle, quality-wise, of those posted. Further work may improve the results, I'm sure.

Photoshop: I don't represent EZMask--it just seems to be one of the easiest and best masking tools I've tried so far, and I have a bunch of them (see under Selection/Masking here). I do still have to try Background Remover and report back.

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by plugsnpixels

Bart, I've also got Background Remover on hand to add to the site--I need to get to that. As a Mac user I'm a bit slower firing up the Windows plug-ins, but I do run Windows on a MacBook, so...

So I spent about an hour practicing with EZMask and exploring every adjustment and following the tutorial last night on extracting the dead tree, and I don't think that tool is really cut out for that sort of thing. After getting the best I could, I then spent about 15 minutes with the extract filter in photoshop. Neither is as good as 30-40 minutes spent with the background eraser. The Photoshop tool has an advantage in that it can import an alpha channel as a starting point so you have the full power of photoshop available to generate a rough outline of the tree. If the BR could do that, it probably would've helped.

Next I tried the pomeranian. Each tool did differently, but I'd say they were about equal over all. Only spent about 5 minutes on the extract filter and maybe 10 minutes with the EZmask (EZmask requires a little bit more manual painting than extract on these difficult ones). You don't want to split hairs (hee hee) when two results are close like this because the difference could be due to my lack of skill with it--that's why I just call it a tie even though the extract filter is a bit more to my liking in this case.

Imageskill's background remover pretty much bombed on both of these. I also have the trial version of vertus liquid mask and it just looks like a heck of a lot of work for both extractions (the dead tree is just rediculous)--I'm sure the background eraser is less work than liquid mask.

I'm attaching results from DFT's EZmask and Adobe's extract. I must say EZmask is the best challenge for the extract filter I've seen yet. You can tell the EZmask examples because the demo silkscreen covers the result. The EZmask result is a bit blurry--I think this is due to the demo version and the full version would not look like that.

I bet if I was a professional doing tons of fairly easy extractions every day, I'd probably find more benefit in these "magic" tools because they work lickety split on simpler extractions (eg., 1 minute lower skill work versus 2 minutes higher skilled work) which would add up to a real time savings after a few hundred.

Edit: I was using EZMask in the comparison here--don't know why I was thinking background remover.

Bart

[Kraellin]

this is good, guys. interesting results and interesting reading.

bart, i tried the Paint Shop Pro bge again last night and today. basically, i still suck at it. you keep touting it and i keep looking at the thing and going, 'yeah, right'. but, i'm also fairly sure it 'must be the operator' from how you've promoted it.

so, what's the trick? got a good tut stashed somewhere? it seems slow and clumsy and sloppy to me so far but when i look at your results....

craig

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by plugsnpixels

If your browser supports tabs, you can open each of our same-size examples and flip among them. I'd say my quickie is in the middle, quality-wise, of those posted. Further work may improve the results, I'm sure.

I agree that looks pretty good although there's some of the white background still left and when I tried it (EZmask) I couldn't get it as good as yours--in particular, the white background in the upper left wasn't removed at all whereas it's all gone in yours (I experimented with different markings and sensitivity settings.) Also, while mine looked good on black, it looked over-erased on white.

Definitely better than the photoshop extract in this case.

Bart

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

that's pretty good, bart. the bge is one of those that i definitely have not mastered. you seem to get pretty good results with it. i'll have to take a look at this thread again tomorrow.

craig

I tried it in Paint Shop Pro and it works just as well as in Photoshop (Photoshop Elements also has the BGE.) I'm attaching about 10 minutes work. I think the main parameters are keep sharpness low, sampling = "once", limits = "discontiguous", auto tolerance. The center of the BGE brush samples the background and the perimeter of the brush samples the foreground.

So you go near the perimeter of the flower and click with a fat brush so that the center of the brush is over background and the flower intersects the edge of the brush somewhere. Paint Shop Pro analyzes the color differential and automatically sets tolerance. Now you can drag back and forth over a pretty large area and remove a bunch of background--even the stuff inside the flower. Pick a new place where the BG didn't get erased and do it again.

Maybe I should do a background eraser tutorial for this months contest.

Here's a tutorial on the Paint Shop Pro BGE that might help you:
http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html

Bart

[Daviskw]

Hi Bart

I get pretty good results the way I do it but it is a slow procedure. I'd like to give BGE a try.

You said you could use alpha channels. How do you use them? I can't get them to work with BGE.

If you are using the color to sample I guess you are working on a RGB layer and not a channel.... How and when do you combine them?

How does it work when you have a multicolored background?.. do you need to keep resampling at each color transition?

Butch

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by Daviskw

Hi Bart

I get pretty good results the way I do it but it is a slow procedure. I'd like to give BGE a try.

You said you could use alpha channels. How do you use them? I can't get them to work with BGE.

If you are using the color to sample I guess you are working on a RGB layer and not a channel.... How and when do you combine them?

How does it work when you have a multicolored background?.. do you need to keep resampling at each color transition?

Butch

Hi Butch,

You can import an alpha channel into the extract filter which is a separate tool.

The BGE samples from the color channels and then selectively erases them (ie., alters the alpha channel). The BGE also changes the color values to de-mix background color from foreground color in semi-transparent fringe areas.

If the background is multicolored, then you would have to keep resampling in which case setting the BGE to continuous sampling might be better. In the Mimosa example, the background is multicolored, but there are only a few different colors and since I need to erase deep within the object and the BG colors are varying even inside the flower, I don't use continuous sampling.

Bart

[Cassidy]

Wow, learn something new every day, have never used the Background Eraser

[Kraellin]

bart,

ok, i tried again last night, before reading your post with the tut link. i worked it and changed settings and by the time i was getting somewhat decent results, i was actually fairly close to what you posted about what settings to use. so, when i read that post today, i tried again with your settings and get even better results.

however, it's still too rough to post my results but, it is better and i believe now i can see the potential. i couldnt even see that before. so, this was definitely a case of 'operator error' in my long ago attempts at using this tool.

i havent a lot of time right now to refine the technique, but at least i'll know where to pick up later on when i do need to get it better. so, thanks! and thanks for the tut link. looks comprehensive.

craig

[Donamai]

Keywords: extracting, extraction, hair, animal

Hi!!

I read this thread and I found it very interesting!! Mask are a great to compositing.

I had seem a thread on how to remove a hairy object. This is the link:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/rp-...ght=extracting

I had also worked on an image with this kind of hair problem to which Gary, a very nice and helpful guy, gave me some information on how to do it without being time-conscious! Thanx again Gary!

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/ima...t=extract+hair




I recently was looking at an image that is a challenge for me as I am starting to experiment with the channels. I have used the RGB channels but I have not played with the LAB or any of the others.

I would work on it when I have time but in the mean time I am posting it in case someone wants to start breaking the challenge. I had noticed that as I look for the right channel some parts of the objects are either toooo light or toooo dark or even transparent. Let me know what you think. Again, I am not expert on the channel extraction but I would like to hear what you guys think.

The image has poor quality and resolution but I was not intented for work.

Take care