Extracting Backgrounds

i have a picture of a car and i would like to take some parts of the background out but not all of its how can i do its, i have tryed using Filter>Extract but it dosnt seem to work, and i read on a site that i can use Crop tool but i am not familuar with that tool is their another way to do this or can some one help me out with they ways thanks

ok i found another way of doing it i used the background earaser, but now i want to put a anohter piocture in the background but i dont want to make it over lay on the forground what can i do?

1) Some other ways to do what you did are using the magnetic lasso tool (only really good when there is a really high contrast between the object and the background. You can access this tool by clicking and holding on the lasso tool until the menu pops out and you select the "magnetic lasso" tool.

You could also use the "magic wand" tool. It looks like a little stick with an asterisk on the end. It's located at the upper right of the rectangular toolbar. When it's selected you can adjust the range of colors it selects in a little text area box at the top. (Just under File, Edit, etc.) It's normally set to 32, but if you increase it, it will be more forgiving and select more colors. Click on the background with that and keep adjusting the numbers until it selects what you want it to, but this isn't always the best option.

Overall the background eraser is a handy tool, I just wanted to make you aware of other options.


2) Now for your most recent question. In the bottom right of your screen is the layers palette. Most likely you have one layer there and it is locked. To fix this, right click on the layer (on the text, i.e. the name of the layer) in the palette and then from the menu that appears, select "duplicate layer." Now there is a second layer, identical to the first, right on top.

Now, in the layers palette there should be a little eye symbol to the left of each layer. Click on that to make a layer become invisible. Do that for the bottom layer. Now in the layers palette there is a tiny little icon that looks like a piece of paper. Click it and it creates a new layer. You now can add stuff to this layer and move it independently from the rest of the picture to your liking. Do this as many times as needed.

To put a layer in front of another layer, simply click (and hold) on it in the layers palette and drag it to a new location in the layers palette. To delete it, drag it to the trash can icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

If you just want to see what something looks like without a layer, just click the little eye symbol to the left.

Hope this helps!