Bits and Peices

when im extracting with Filter>extract it always leaves bits a peaces their of the stuff that i wanted to be removed? why dose it do that can some one help me with this i have been having lots of trouble with this extracting i cant find a good way to extract, people have told me to use the magic wand but i find that its very dificult doing that way, if any one can proof me wrong can you, or can one help me out on how to extract...

There is really not quick and easy one click way to do it. Many times to get the best results you just have to zoom way in and use the Pen tool or the Polygonal lasso tool and do it by hand. You really can't trust a computer algorithm to know exactly what you are wanting to isolate from the background, you pretty much have to do it yourself for the best results.

one of the major reasons it does this, is because theres not enought contrast between the edge you higlighted and the immediate background your trying to knock out/extract....

ie, both the edge and the background resemble too much in color - or in other words they are contiguous....

my best extracts occur when the bg is brighter in color as opposed to dark..... some times i add an adjustment layer to bump down the dark tones in levels..

another suggestion is to zoom in and use a smaller brush size when drawing your ege highlight line, as opposed to normal view and a large brush

fianlly, another thing to remember is to NOT draw your edge highlight line too far into the background area, cause in the above cases i mention, it will find contiguous areas you never intented....

hope they make sense
cheers
heathrowe

is their a way to make the parts of the background brighter that i dont want so it can knock it out

try playing around with the contrast or the levels. It depends on your picture.

Of course a computer will never know what you're doing. The best thing it can do is find contiguous areas. The computer, however, won't be able to look at a jpg and tell it's a dog or a car or something.

Like deker said, the best way is to zoom your ass in and grab a selection tool. It is the most time consuming way but it gets you the best results.

Adjustment Layers and manually created Layer Masks.

Screw the Extract tool. I spend more time tweaking an extraction than I would making my own mask. About the same as AutoPath or AutoTrace with vectors. Practically useless for precision work.

yip there is a way - and i've done it many times even on the most obscure image.....

here's how i do it....
1. duplicate the layer you plan to extract on
2. apply a Levels adjustment and toy with light levels adjuster -- the one to the far right
3. with just the right adjustment, u should have a nice or at least a half descent contrast going on with the subject and the background (enought to draw an accurate highlight edge)
4. Extract as usual
5. Now u have a good extract (hopefully).. control click on the extract layer to select it
6. with the selection still active, turn off visibility of the duplicate layer you just performed the extract on, and select the original layer and hit the Layer Mask icon on the bottom

that should do it

hope that helps
cheers
heathrowe

Hey Heathrowe, that was the best advice for this project that i have gotten since i started i finally got to do what i wanted, it turned out really good, it looks sick!

post your success in here, show how well it did!

how do i put a a picture up?