Extraction 2

**Grafixman** · 07 September 2005, 11:50 AM

Sally's hair extraction got me in the mood to do some extraction experiments... This one is from a posted pic in the Photoshop forum.
Glass Sphere
The challenge is to extract the swirly fractal flame from the posted pic. I don't think PI's extraction tool is the one to use for this....

Here's what I got so far...

**sallybode** · 07 September 2005, 09:01 PM

This isn't exactly extraction. But it is a good second. Many layers, inversions, desaturations, Eliminate White, Eliminate Black, merge layers, do more. And flood fill the background with gradient.

**Grafixman** · 08 September 2005, 01:23 AM

I see you used the pic I posted

.
Go to the link I posted. The picture there is bigger and has a nice solid black background. As with any image sources, the higher the definition, the better the result.
For this one, I just created a grayscale copy of the pic, went back to the colored original, then from Selection, load selection, then chose the grayscale copy. Converted to object, and the image is extracted. You can use the smudge tool to smear the colors to the edges to get rid of the remaining background image included in the selection. Most of the time, this is useful for complicated shapes like trees or grass or those with partial transparencies like bottles or transparent glass.
Sometimes you have to tweak the levels of the grayscale copy, or paint areas you don't want selected with black. Just remember that in the grayscale copy, the white parts represents the selected parts, the black parts the unselected and the gray tones represents partial transparency when you use it to create the selection.
Just another tidbit I picked up from those endless Photoshop tutorials I always go through...

**sallybode** · 08 September 2005, 03:28 PM

It will be a few days before I get back to it. I've just gotten some tutorials for CorelDRAW by Foster Coburn that will be occupying my time for a few days.

Have you downloaded PI 10 for a trial? Most filters and plugins are not available for free trial unless they are free to begin with. When a file is difficult to extract, I use other methods to increase the contrast such as inverting it, or using layers and doing especially exclusion or difference to enhance the contrast, merging and then dropping out a background that way and developing a mask that I can use later on. Of course the original is saved in a duplicate layer with eye icon turned off in case I flub. It may be that the programs that do extraction are analyzing the image in a similar manner in order to tell which pixels to make transparent. At first when I learned vector art and it was in Illustrator, I learned how to create the appearance of transparency when no transparency was avaiable in the program itself. The final result was what matters and still is. If done for a client, they only know if they are pleased with the results or not. Not why it is good or not in their opinion. Layer masks in Photoshop by allowing you to paint in grayscale, do allow you to do a partial knockout, however, that will only eliminate all of the image, not that parts you want. However a grayscale mask in channels if the background is primarily red, green or blue, could be used in masking. This is theoretical, I haven't tried it. Just brainstorming.

But right now, I have other things I'd rather get to first.

Found some interesting color swatches that are by Pantone which tells you for each hue what the CMYK color equivalent is. That is useful. And that is $29.00. I may invest in that for work.

Hi-end retouching for fashion models with wind-blown hair is a novelty for me, knowing how to do it, I get very little call for that where I work, no-- I get no call for that. When I do have to retouch people's portraits, they are normally well-groomed but old, worn-out pictures, or out of focus stuff that people have kept in a junk drawer, such they think is fit for the front of a funeral folder. Not terribly exciting. That's as close as I get to the Forensics of it.

**Grafixman** · 09 September 2005, 01:42 AM

Nope, I didn't download the PI trial. I already have too many programs installed in my PC, I don't know what to explore when I find the time

. There are just so many hours in a day...
Yes, layer masks are very useful. Too bad PI doesn't support them. They're a great feature to have... Non-destructive, editable transparency.
Great to hear you're digging into some tutorials. I'm sure we're all going to benefit from that as soon as you share your discoveries

. Nah, not being a moocher

. You don't have to share ALL your trade secrets

. But that would be nice, though....

How accurate are color swatches, in your opinion? I would imagine you can have the most definitive color swatch in the world, but in the end, it comes down to what the client wants and what the printer can come up with, so it's still a compromise, huh?
Ah, yes, the glamor of real life photo manipulation. But overkill learning doesn't hurt...