Extracting Hair

[sallybode]

PhotoPaint's extraction tool, I must admit, haven't tried it. PP has a lot of neat tools that I haven't really even used once. But I will for the comarison.

The PI extraction tool works better than most I've tried. I am wondering if you have tried Kai's Knockout, now one of the ones Corel has bought. Is that good, I suppose if they get $99.00 for just that, it must be spectacular.

I like this version of PI. Still it is a lot like 8, but the add-ons are cool. The dockable palettes are very useful.

1. PhotoPaint
2. PaintShopPro
3. Photoshop 7.0
4. PhotoImpact 10

I have included four pictures to compare the results, the first is PhotoPaint and the extraction process isn't very good, and there is no "refining" a process that lets you add and subtract pixels with more finesse. Paint Shop Pro has the background eraser, if there is an extraction in 9, I couldn't find it. The Background Eraser, though it allows you to get back what you erased, leave a more jagged edge and takes a long time. The next is Photoshop. Looks good, however, this is really for hair only, the rest of the extraction was done with a layer mask (so I cheated--I helped Photoshop along). But Uleads gives the best result and even to the hands and the body. With Extraction, there are trade offs to get good hair extraction, you have to do some work with the eraser to clean up the stray pixels, but there are more tools and the results are both better and take less time. So if you are going to spend the time, use the better tool, in this case, the extraction tool out did Photoshop. Photoshop's refining ability does not allow you to repair what you are not happy with very well, you can get holes in your artwork you can't fix and so I got tired of doing it over only to never get a satisfactory result. However, where there was hair, the extraction tool did a good job. PhotoImpact has a background eraser that is absolutely amazing on solid color backgrounds, better than the selection tool. The last picture is a butterfly this method was used on, in addition to some custom shadows that made the wings look more transparent, one click and even the delicate antenna on the butterfly was not damaged at all. When comparing this to Paint Shop Pro's background eraser, there is much less work and much less damage to the picture. I like less work, don't you?

So there you have it.