Playing with Selection Tools to Extract

While I was becoming frustrating trying to learn the masking from scratch technique, I decided to practice more with the quick selection tool and refining edges option. I ended up with this composite.

Here is the original image I extracted Kiki from.

Lesson 5 - Extracting with Masks

This weeks lesson was to define a mask from scratch...or it's also called manual masking. We also learned about Color Range and another Extract tool, which to me seemed much easier with a more complex image and both of these techniques are more automatic techniques. I tried several images that did not have a simple background or such extreme contrast to begin with and was not able to pull a mask out. If anyone knows of any other tutorials on this I would appreciate a link so I can practice more. Thanks


I ended up using a more simple image and ended up with this final image. One other tip I ended up finding on the Internet was that while I created a nice mask off this eagle, there seems to be some whitish and darker edges around the tail and top of his wings. I read that you can select "Layer" then down at the bottom select "matting" then you have three choices, I used a combination of the two "Remove Black and White Matte" it worked great.

Lesson 4 - Complimentary Color Scheme

The wine cave and the glass of wine, which is reflecting the tasting room bell tower, was taken at Wente Vineyards in Livermore. The reflection in the glass is not a separate image. I choose to use a nice complimentary color scheme for this image. I really liked with way the blues looked with the warm yellows and oranges and thought it gave the cave a very interesting mood. I wanted to stay with the yellowish hue as it was the closest color to chardonnay I saw, which was the type of wine in the glass. This image has nine sources all together, not including the duplicate image of the grapes. At first look you might not notice, but if you look closely you will see six other images. For some unknown reason I was compelled to include very faint ghostly like images of some friends faces that I just recently took at a birthday party.


The only difference I noticed about using the colorizing method verses the duotone method is that the duotone comes out cleaner without having to do other adjustments. When I applied my colorization and even when I played with the gradient technique I ended up having to go into the levels to bring out a more distinct contract. The image came out perfect when I applied the duotone adjustment first try. What I am really starting to think about Photoshop is that they overloaded it with too many ways to basically get the same final result. It’s just a matter of trial and error and experimenting to learn which ones work fastest or best for what your final outcome will be.

Continued Lesson 2 - Duotone

This is a picture of my dog Sparky, he was cut out of it's original picture by using the Quick Selection tool as well....and moved into this other beach photo. This was the first image I started working on for this lesson, but decided after I created it that the contrast was just not sharp enough and it was lacking some details. The image below was much more satisfying and the details and contrast is what I was expecting.

Photoshop CS3 - Lession 2 - Duotone

The duotone image. This is two images, one of my husband and one of Lake Almaden. I loved the contrast that came out of using the duotone technique and how sharp the reflection turned out in his sunglasses.

The selection technique I used for extracting my husbands face was the quick selection tool. I also used the refine edge to get a nice clean cut around the mustache .