Using Magic Extractor - Photoshop Elements

For many of us, extracting out an image from its background is very challenging. Not anymore, that is if you have Photoshop Elements, an in expensive photo retouching tool.

Let's use a typical group photo to illustrate the steps:

This photo is what u will normally have. Almost everyone wears the same color clothes and the background is not so uniform to be selected out.

We are going to extract the boy in from, with blue jeans.

Step 1
Select Image->Magic Extractor from the pull down menu. You will now be presented with a new pop up window, the Magic Extractor window.

Step 2
Using the foreground brush tool (the 1st button on the left), dash or dot on the inside edges of the person you are extracting. Use short dashes, or even dots, if you are at very hard to define edges. Zoom in closer will help. By the way, these will show up as red dots and strokes on the image. Don't worry about it, it is not affecting the original image.

Step 3
Continue using the same foreground brush, use long zig-zag strokes to draw within the image you are selecting.

Step 4
Using the background brush tool (the 2nd button on the left), dash or dot on the outside edges of the person. Same rules applies here, try to get very close to the edges. Zoom in and use short dashes or dots if you are at hard to reach places.

Step 5
Continue using the BACKGROUND brush tool, draw long zig-zag lines on all the rest of the image you do not want.

The picture should look like this now:











Step 6
Click on Preview button to see the possible result. You should see quite a nicely extracted image of the boy.

Step 7
Repeat any of the paint foreground or paint background steps above if you have to. However, if you have followed closely, you can safely click on Ok button now.




The image which I have at this stage:






Step 8
You should see some unwanted patches here and there, but quite far away from the image you want. They can be easily removed, or in my case, I just crop out the boy I want.

Finally use a small soft eraser tool to clean the edges of the image extracted.

The result:

Zoom In for Photoshop Liquify

A thing which I find hard to do with liquify is that there is not enough details while you are editing. The liquify edit window lowers the resolution of the image in order to speed things up.

A neat and common technique is to copy the region you intend to liquify, paste it into a new image, then apply liquify on that smaller image. Copy and paste it back to the original image when done. This approach has several advantages:

- the original image layer is not altered, the liquified image segment is pasted in as new layer

- while doing the liquify, you have a higher resolution image to work with. Preview is closer to the end result.

Here is the step-by-step guide:

1. This is the original image. I have decided to use a male model since female models will complain when I show their ugly pre-edited photos ; )

His eyes are a bit sleepy. We are going to use liquify to open them up a bit.











2. Select and copy the eye region. Make sure there is more than enough margin around the intended edit area. Paste this into a newly created file.





3. Now choose Filter -> Distort -> Liquify. Open up the eyes slightly by bringing the middle upper lids upwards. Pull up the neighboring area to ensure the eye shape is still intact. Lift the outer ends of the eyes slightly if the eyes look droopy.


4. Once done, copy the edited eyes, and paste it back to the original image. It will automatically be created as a new layer. You can activate and deactivate the layer to see the before and after effect.

Go for Gold

Photo shoot of Ellis.
Gold foundation.

Model Shoot - Geneve

Photo shoot for Geneve.

Model Shoot - Karen

Model shoot of Karen:

Beach Ball Babes

This was 1 of the rare instances when I lugged my huge 70-200mm Canon lens out for a shoot. Some hits and misses. A very tiring task to focus on the correct subject(s)... moving all the time.

This was a match between China and Brazil. If I am not wrong, it was part of the SWATCH FIVB World Tour. Here are the babes:

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Model shoot of Michelle. Photos :

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