#2 Exploring Adobe Photoshop CS3: Extracting Foreground Objects

Just recently, I stumbled upon the fact that slanting the bounding box of the area to retain upon cropping will straighten up. Just so like this:

I hadn't realized it until then, so I guess this would be a good opportunity to make something out of it. (:

So after the cropping stuff, let's put this picture into good use.

Let's begin by duplicating the BACKGROUND layer. This will prevent us from modifying the original picture - in case we want to start again from the original.

I wanted to retain only the building and remove the background. This is where the EXTRACT tool comes in. On the menu bar, select FILTER -> EXTRACT... A window will then open containing more tools for extraction.

First, we set the brush size to 11. Now this would depend on the object you are extracting and values may vary. Then, select the EDGE HIGHLIGHTER TOOL and use it to mark around the edges of the object to be extracted, in this case, the building.

Since the building's shape is made up of straight lines, we can hold the SHIFT KEY down to create straight lines. Just a little tip though, creating diagonal lines is similar to that of creating a polygon. The end point of the line will 'begin' at the last point you marked and the other end point will 'end' on where your click your mouse.

The highlight you made must always be a closed shape. This is because of the FILL TOOL we will be using. The area marked by the FILL TOOL will be the area to retain. Leaving any holes will cause the fill to leak into the background - which is something we would not want to happen.

Now, using the FILL TOOL, click inside the area of the highlighted border. A blue color will then appear. We can now click on the preview button!

Well it does look rather messy but this could be cleaned by the CLEANUP TOOL followed by the EDGE TOUCHUP TOOL. You can use the ZOOM TOOL and HAND TOOL to help you in cleaning small areas and in navigating around the canvas.

Once satisfied with the image, you can now click on the ok button.

Now this building seems crooked...

So there!