Hey Guys n Girls

Is Extract the best way to make intricate selections, such as whispy hair and posed, clothed figures?

I played with all selection tools and they all seem a little hit and miss.

I need to isolate a figure from its background and to its own layer. Once a make the selection I know i can save selection to a layer.  But that making of the selection in the first place is escaping me.

At best I get a scrappy, untidy looking selection.  Although, to date the easiest way to get to this point has been the Extraction filter tool....

Help!

stefani aka drky

“….hair and posed, clothed figures”….

That sounds like you are referring to Poser renders.
If that is the case, the easiest thing to do is to save your Poser render as a Png file.
When opened in Photoshop the background will already be gone.

Or save the render to either a Tiff or PDS file, and you will have a perfect mask in the Alpha channel to use as your cutout selection.

SWAMP

Well there is not real one solution for masking and no magic bullet.  Often you need to utilized multiple techniques to produce a single mask.  One technique I perfer is called channel masking.  That combined with photoshops quick masking mode, brushs, and selection tools you can generate quick, quality masks of almost any subject as long as there is some amount of seperation in color,  saturation, or density.

Here is a tutorial:  http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/blrbps_2fwks.htm

A google search will result in more examples of this technique.  

One trick is to channel masking in alternet color spaces. To avoid any color compresssion, make a duplicate of the image convert to CYMK, generate your mask and then copy the mask back to your RGB or LAB document.

You can also mix and merge channel using the Channel mixer.

J. Stuart J.