How to,....explained inside ;)

[Dinozaver]

I was wondering, if anyone know where i can find a good tutorial about extracting a logo/person/object from image. So when u save it and open it again it shows only that image, whitout background? The image can be used for watermark,...i hope i made myself clear enough. If not ill try and explain a little better what i need. Tnx

[shaunes001]

Hmm there are a couple of ways. I personally use the polygon lasso tool, sure it takes ages but it is very accurate if you put the time in. Simply select the area then hold down Alt to deselect unwanted pieces of the background and to fine tune the image to get the perfect edges.

Another way is to use Filter-->Extract (or Alt+Ctrl+X ) which is kinda like quick mask, pretty easy really, just "paint" over the area u want to extract, right click the areas you dont want (ie. background?), you should end up with a selection, then its just a case of copy and paste into a new document, or inverse selection (Select->Inverse or Shift+Ctrl+I) and press delete.

If this doesnt help or its not what your after, let me know and I'll try something else

[tamlin]

There are lots of ways to do this (as there are to do just about anything in Photoshop), and it depends very much on your original image, but you might want to look at the Extract filter. Here's a couple of tutorials to get you started:

MacMerc.com: Photoshop Not-so-Quick Tip #9: Photoshop's Extract filter
Use Photoshop's Extract Filter to isolate an image

This page details some of the techniques:
Tools and Techniques for Removing Backgrounds with Photoshop

[paulopires]

This depends on how complex is the background. I use the quick mask for complex backgrounds.
My english is not good enough for me to explain... so just go to this link and download a video explaning the use of quick mask to make selections.

www.photoshopkillertips.com/archives/48


and here you have a simple watermark
www.photoshopkillertips.com/archives/220

This website has a lot of interesting videos for everyone.

[stiney51]

Also as far as having the background gone when you open it back up, you would have to have the image you cut out on its own layer and save the file with layers (.PSD or .TIFF with layers). If you save it as a flattened file, you will have the white background to cut out when you open the file back up.

[shaunes001]

unless you save as a .gif and preserve transparency ^.^

[tamlin]

Originally Posted by shaunes001

unless you save as a .gif and preserve transparency ^.^

Except that if your original image has more than 256 colours, you will lose quality if you save it as a GIF.

[wombie]

I usually like to use the channels to create an alpha channel then save as a .tiff or a .targa

[notjustgraphics]

There may be better ways to do this, but this is my little trick:

If the background is very complex, I duplicate the layer and adjust the contrast/brightness/saturation to simplify the image as much as possible without distorting the are of the image I need to extract.... Then I create my selection using the simplified layer, but CUT from the untouched layer and paste into a new image...

It only helps with certain types of images... but it's proved useful for me...

Mike.

[tamlin]

Originally Posted by notjustgraphics

There may be better ways to do this, but this is my little trick:

If the background is very complex, I duplicate the layer and adjust the contrast/brightness/saturation to simplify the image as much as possible without distorting the are of the image I need to extract.... Then I create my selection using the simplified layer, but CUT from the untouched layer and paste into a new image...

It only helps with certain types of images... but it's proved useful for me...

Mike.

Yes - I've done that before. In some extreme cases, you can even use Threshold to really simplify the image.

[Dinozaver]

WOW guys! Thank you, this will help me a lot. Once more thank you

[agentxi]

Yeah a million different ways to do 1 thing...that's photoshop for ya

I'm a huge fan of vector masks...I usually just snag the pen tool, and draw around the object...and then quickly tweak it as needed, then create a vector mask, then you can always go back adjust without changing the original at all...