I lately have been using the Magic Extractor in Photoshop Elements 7 to extract people out of pictures for the purpose of putting a new background in place. One thing I disliked was that once I click the Okay button, all decisions were final. There was no way of going back and tweaking the extract. Everything had to be done right the first time. That is why I started doing the following so that my extraction was not on the photograph itself but was in a layer mask. This now allows me to tweak the extraction at any time.
- Open the image from which you wish to extract a person or item from.
- Duplicate the background layer (Layer -> Duplicate Layer).
- Select the background layer.
- Open the Magic Extractor (Image -> Magic Extractor).
- Perform the extraction on the image.
- Add a Solid Color layer below the duplicated layer (Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Solid Color).
- Ctrl-Click on the thumbnail of the background layer in layer palette.
- Click on the layer mask of the solid color layer.
- Be sure that white is selected as the background color and black as the foreground color.
- Use the Fill Bucket to paint the layer mask black.
- Press the Delete key. You will now see your extracted selection in white in the layer mask thumbnail.
- Delete the background layer.
- Select the previously duplicated layer of your image and press Ctrl-G.
Now you have your extracted person in your working view. If you want to tweak the extraction at all, now you just need to select the layer mask and use a paint brush to work the edges. In a layer mask, black makes things become transparent and white makes them become opaque. This technique works with Photoshop as well (with some modifications to the steps).
This can also be used with selections. Instead of using the Magic Extractor, select what you want to keep and use that as the selection in the above steps.