Following on from the last Photoshop tutorial I've put together another small tutorial. This time we're going to work through using the Extract Tool, a great tool that will allow you to extract part of an image. Have you ever wondered how people make those neat fake photos of themselves with famous people? Well, theres a good chance they use Adobe Photoshop and the Extract Tool. This tutorial is intended for users who are familiar with Photoshop.

Because of copyright issues I can't really use a picture of a famous person, so instead we'll use the image of a flower. Feel free to right click your mouse and save the image to your hard disk.

 

What we are going to do is to extract the flower from the background, so that we can use the flower by itself in another context. Open the flower image in your version of Photoshop and click "Filter" then "Extract" from the top menu. The Extract window will appear.

Notice the tools on the left hand side. At the very top there is the "Edge Highlighter Tool (B)", then the "Fill Tool (G)", then the "Eraser tool (E)", then we skip two, then the "Zoom Tool (Z)" and the "Hand Tool (H)". The letters in brackets after each tool name is the shortcut key to utilise each tool. Keep these in mind as you will want to swap tools often during the extract process.

For now though select the Zoom Tool by pressing the "Z" key, position the magnifying glass over the petals of the flower and then click your mouse to zoom in as close as you want. I zoomed in six times. From here we will be able to work around sections of the flower, then move to a different section using the Hand tool. What we want to achieve is to highlight all the edges of the flower so that we can "extract" it from its background. The flower petals will become very blurry, as in the image below, but don't worry that is supposed to happen. Lets begin.

Select the Edge Highlighter Tool by pressing the "B" key and on the right hand side of the Extract Screen ensure that the "Brush Size" is set to "1" in the "Tools Options" menu. Start to draw along the very edge of the flower with the highlighter, you will see the highlighter appear in a red colour, which is the default. You can change the colour at any time by clicking on the drop down menu for Highlight in the "Tools Options" menu. You should be seeing something like in the image below.

When you have completed the section, press the "H" key to select the Hand Tool and move the image around to the next section and continue highlighting the edge. If you make a mistake with a line, select the Erase Tool by pressing "E" and simply erase the incorrect bit and redraw using the Highlight Tool. Once you're done, double click the "Zoom Tool" to take the image back to normal. Possibly your red highlight won't be that visible at this point, but thats okay as the next step will help ensure you have things right.

Select the Fill Tool by pressing "G", position your fill bucket inside the highlighted flower and click. If you have used the Highlight Tool correctly and there are no gaps then your flower should look like the image below ... Note: I didn't highlight the whole bottom section of my flower, just part of the stem. Note also that you can barely see the red highlight but the blue fill colour is visible.

Don't panic if your fill isn't inside the highlighted flower but has spilled out into the background, this is only because there is a gap somewhere in your highlighting. Use the Zoom Tool and zoom in close enough to see if there are gaps in the red highlight around the flower. Then use the Hightlight Tool and the Erase Tool, whichever is appropriate, to "fix" the highlighted edge around the flower. Use the Fill Tool again to see if you have "joined the dots" and if only the flower is highlighted you can click "Preview" on the top right of the Extract Screen.

If you're happy with your flower click "OK". You'll find yourself back in your original image, only this time the background has disappeared and you should be looking at an image something like the one below.

At this point you might notice that some of the edges are a little rough. I used the "History Brush Tool (Y)", zoomed in close and touched up some of the rough edges and of course I couldn't resist jazzing up the background a little and adding in some layer styles. But perhaps you could use your flower in another image altogether. The possibilites are unlimited. I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial as much as I've enjoyed putting it together for you.