RP Tutorials - - Looking for good tutorial on extraction

Ed_L · #1 04-28-2002, 10:25 AM

I'm trying to get used to using the extraction tool in Photoshop 7. I downloaded three images to try extracting, and two of them have been reasonably good. But I'm having trouble with this one, and I was wondering if anyone knew of a good tutorial.

Ed

Doug Nelson · #2 04-28-2002, 11:21 AM

OW! Just the thought of extracting that one hurts

I know you're hoping to learn more about extraction, but seriously I'd never consider the extraction tool for this image. Come to think of it, I rarely consider the extraction tool at all.

Great shot, though.

There was an excellent movie that ships with Martin Evening's "Photoshop for Photographers" that demonstrates a technique of using other PS tools to select the area where the extraction is to take place, saving the selection, then using a dialog box in the extraction tool to reload it, thus increasing precision and decreasing the amount of work the extract had to do.

Ed_L · #3 04-28-2002, 12:15 PM

Thanks Doug. I downloaded this image because it had all the fine hairs. And with reasonably good contrast with the background, I thought it might be fairly easy. I had considered using other avenues for extraction, but I wanted to learn about the extraction tool. Do many people use it, or is it just an overrated tool?

Ed

Doug Nelson · #4 04-28-2002, 12:22 PM

If you downloaded it, the resolution might be the problem. Even our Challenge images rarely have sufficient resolution for decent masking, let alone extraction.

Ed_L · #5 04-28-2002, 12:29 PM

Aha! I didn't even think about that!

Ed

winwintoo · #6 04-28-2002, 01:08 PM

I'm not an expert, but I've been trying different things and this seemed to work - it needs some cleaning up, but this technique seems to have done a good job of selecting all the little hairs....

I duplicated the background (following Katrin's advice to never work on the original background :smile:

Next, I did command+option+tilde (that's the ~ thingy) to select the luminosity of the picture. delete. Do this a coule of times until you've gotten rid of most of the background. Then I just used the eraser to remove the rest of the background and added an orange backdrop so you can see the fur better.

Margaret

Ed_L · #7 04-28-2002, 06:44 PM

Margaret,

That looks like a very successful technique. I also have her book, but didn't try any techniques other than using the extract tool. Thanks for posting.

Ed

DannyRaphael · #8 04-28-2002, 10:42 PM

Hi Ed:

Like you I'm not as familiar with the Extract tool as I'd like to be (think I should be). I flailed around with it a few times and for me, found it a little ackward to use; perhaps I didn't give it a long enough shot. In any event over time I've gravitated toward other techniques and tools, e.g., the "locate the color channel with the highest contrast and build a mask from it" or hauling out the big gun, Procreate Knockout.

Once upon a time I was poking around for Extract tutorials; found a couple that looked promising, so I added them to my "favorites." Have to confess my intentions were/are good, but the fact is I haven't gotten around to checking them out yet. Perhaps one might be useful to you.

http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa090501a.htm

http://www.creativepro.com/img/story/ExtractHair.pdf

http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorial...d4/method4.htm

http://www.adobeevangelists.com/pdfs...ks/Extract.pdf

http://graphicssoft.about.com/gi/dyn...technique.html

Hope one of these is helpful.

Cheers...
~DannyR~

Stephen M · #9 04-29-2002, 02:26 AM

http://www.ps6.com/Tutorials/Extract/intro.html

http://www.ps6.com/Tutorials/select.html

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binar...V_links.html#M

Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh.

Ed_L · #10 04-29-2002, 11:29 AM

Danny and Stephen,

Thanks very much for the links. I'll surely check them out, hoping to learn a thing or two.

Ed

Yubal · #11 12-07-2003, 04:14 PM

-Hello,this is my first post.
-This is a nice tutorial (QuickTime movie) for extract:
http://www.russellbrown.com/tips/mov...undExtract.mov

-See :http://www.russellbrown.com
For more tutorials

DannyRaphael · #12 12-07-2003, 04:33 PM

Welcome, Yubal.

For a first post, this is a valuable one. Thanks for contributing so soon after joining!

~Danny~

Flora · #13 12-08-2003, 12:47 PM

Thanks to everybody for the precious links!!

Yubal,

...I had already seen that excellent tutorial but couldn't locate it anymore ... so ... thank you very much for helping me find it again!

Ed,

this is what I got using the Russel Brown Tutorial ....

Ed_L · #14 12-08-2003, 09:51 PM

Thanks for the link, Yubal, and welcome to RP.

Flora...nice results. But then, we expect that from you.

Thanks for taking the time to post your results.

Ed

winwintoo · #15 05-13-2004, 09:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by winwintoo

Next, I did command+option+tilde (that's the ~ thingy) to select the luminosity of the picture.

Hi all, This thread is proving to be useful to someone who wrote to me and asked for further explanation but unfortunately I can't help off the top of my head and I can't find Katrin's book right now.

I think the example in the book dealt with selecting fly-away hair if I remember correctly.

Can someone look in Katrin's book and post the translation of the keystrokes from Mac to Windows which I should have done when I originally posted

Thank you so much, Margaret