Jared

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.

1. Open the image from which you wish to extract a person or item from.
2. Duplicate the background layer (Layer -> Duplicate Layer).
3. Select the background layer.
4. Open the Magic Extractor (Image -> Magic Extractor).
5. Perform the extraction on the image.
6. Add a Solid Color layer below the duplicated layer (Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Solid Color).
7. Ctrl-Click on the thumbnail of the background layer in layer palette.
8. Click on the layer mask of the solid color layer.
9. Be sure that white is selected as the background color and black as the foreground color.
10. Use the Fill Bucket to paint the layer mask black.
11. Press the Delete key. You will now see your extracted selection in white in the layer mask thumbnail.
12. Delete the background layer.
13. 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.

In my November 30 – December 6, 2008 Photo of the Week, I posted a picture of my son. In that posted photo, I removed the background and placed a backdrop in place to give the appearance that the photo was taken in a studio. The backdrop is one of my own creations and in this post I will describe how I created that backdrop.

1. Create a new image preferably larger in resolution than the images it will be used in.
2. Add a layer that contains the base color for the backdrop. Think in terms of painting. We will create this base color and then “paint” patches over it.
3. Add a second layer with another color you want to see in the backdrop, perhaps a different shade of the base color or a completely different color.
4. Add a layer mask to this second layer.
5. Make the layer mask the item to be edited.
6. Use the selection tool to select a relatively small area of the layer mask. (We will be stretching this selection in following steps.)
7. We now need to render clouds in this selection. Most editor’s have the ability to do this. In Photoshop it is under Filters -> Render.
8. We now need to transform this selection to stretch it out. It needs to be stretched out to at least fill the image and perhaps stretched beyond that.
9. Repeats the steps of creating the second layer for any additional colors you wish to add to the backdrop.

And now you have a backdrop that can be used to add that professional touch to your home studio images. Simply copy the resulting image and paste behind your subject, or copy your subject into this image. Below is the backdrop I used for that POTW.