Ever feel the urge to pluck an object out of a photo’s background? For example, maybe you want to take an amazing shot you got of the moon and stick it in another photo. The traditional way of doing that is to make your selection, invert it (Changing and Moving Selections), and then delete the rest of the image. But Elements streamlines this process with another “magic” tool—the Magic Extractor.
Extracting objects used to be a very time-consuming process, often involving expensive third-party plug-ins to make the job easier. Now the Magic Extractor is all you need in most situations. It works much like the Quick Selection tool in that you just give Elements a few hints and it does the rest. When the Magic Extractor is done, your selection is isolated in all its lonely glory, surrounded by transparency and ready for use on its own. Like the Quick Selection tool, this tool does a surprisingly good job—most of the time. To conduct your own experiments, download the practice photo figurine.jpg from this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com.
Tip
You may find it faster to use the Quick Selection tool (Selecting with a Brush) and then invert your selection (as explained on Inverting a Selection) and delete the background area. If that doesn’t work, then it’s time to try the Magic Extractor.
The Magic Extractor has an elaborate dialog box with tools found nowhere else in Elements. (To see it, go to Image→Magic Extractor.) The dialog box includes a toolbox on the left, instructions across the top, a preview of your image, and a set of controls on the right. It looks complicated, but it’s really just a bunch of easy-to-use options for tweaking what you’ve got before Elements extracts your object. Here’s how to use this timesaving tool:
Go to Image→Magic Extractor, or press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+V/Option-Shift-⌘-V.
Your image appears in the preview area of the Magic Extractor dialog box (Figure 5-14).
Note
The Magic Extractor sometimes has problems with very large files. So if you need to extract an object from a hefty image, you may get better results if you crop away any unnecessary areas first. See Cropping Pictures for more about cropping.
If necessary, change the marker colors.
On the right side of the dialog box are two colored boxes. Usually, you’ll see red for the Foreground brush (the one you use to mark what you want to keep) and blue for the Background brush (the one that tells Elements what to discard). To make the brushstrokes easier to see, you can click the boxes to bring up the Color Picker (Choosing Colors) and choose new colors.
Use the Foreground brush (Removing Objects from an Image’s Background) to tell Elements what you want to extract (Figure 5-16 shows where to find this brush).
Make some marks on the object you want to keep. You can draw lines, as shown in Figure 5-14, but making dots on your object may work just as well. With a little practice, you’ll soon know what kind of marks you need for each object.
Click the Background brush’s icon (Figure 5-16) and tell Elements what to exclude.
Use this tool to make some marks in the areas you don’t want Elements to include in your selection.
Click the Preview button.
The Preview area shows what Elements thinks you want to do. If what you see isn’t even close, click the Reset button at the bottom of the dialog box and start over.
If necessary, use the dialog box’s various tools to adjust the boundaries of your selection.
For example, if Elements left off an area you want, usually just one click with the Foreground brush is enough to add it. If there are spots missing within the selection, click the Fill Holes button. If you need to get a better view of your work, use the Zoom and Hand tools (both of which are explained in more detail starting on The Zoom Tool).
Fine-tune the edges of your selection if you wish.
Add a feather (The Magic Wand), defringe (Changing and Moving Selections), or smooth the edges of the selection with the Smoothing brush (explained in a moment).
When you like what you see, click OK.
If you want to give up and try another method, click the Cancel button instead. Figure 5-15 shows what the Magic Extractor can do.
![Just the few marks you saw in Figure 5-14 produce this perfectly extracted selection, all ready to move to another image. (If you look very closely, there’s a tiny bit of the purple background next to his beard, but a click with the Eraser tool [page 418] should fix that in a jiffy.)](httpatomoreillycomsourceoreillyimages906775.png.jpg)
Figure 5-15. Just the few marks you saw in Figure 5-14 produce this perfectly extracted selection, all ready to move to another image. (If you look very closely, there’s a tiny bit of the purple background next to his beard, but a click with the Eraser tool [page 418] should fix that in a jiffy.)
Note
Once you understand layers (Chapter 6), you’ll know that the Magic Extractor works only on the active layer. If you want to extract an object without wrecking the rest of your photo, make a duplicate layer (Deleting Layers) and work on that new layer. And in some cases, you may prefer to use a layer mask instead (see Layer Masks).
The Magic Extractor gives you lots of ways to make sure Elements creates a perfect selection. Its dialog box contains a whole set of special tools that are unique to the Extractor, as you can see in Figure 5-16. Each has its own keyboard shortcut (noted in parentheses after the tool’s name in the list below) to make it easy to switch tools while you work. From top to bottom, you get:
Figure 5-16. The tools in the Magic Extractor’s toolbox make it unbelievably easy to create complex selections and get smooth, professional-looking results when you extract objects.
Foreground brush (Keyboard shortcut: B). Use this brush to mark what you want to include in your extracted object. You can change the brush’s color by choosing a different foreground color on the dialog box’s right side.
Background brush (P). This brush tells Elements what you want to cut away from your selection. Like the Foreground brush, you can pick a different color for this brush on the dialog box’s right side.
Point Eraser tool (E). If you mark something by mistake with the Foreground or Background brush, use this tool to erase the marks.
Add to Selection tool (A). For adding to the selection you already have.
Remove from Selection tool (D). Whatever you paint over with this tool gets omitted from your selection.
Smoothing brush (J). Once you’ve previewed your selection, you can use this tool to even out any ragged edges. But it’s a good idea to try the Touch Up commands on the right side of the dialog box (they’re explained in a moment) first because you may not need this brush.
Zoom tool (Z) and Hand tool (H). These are the same trusty standbys you use to adjust your view elsewhere in Elements. See The Zoom Tool for more about using these tools.
Tip
Some of the fine-tuning tools, like the Smoothing brush, work much better if you zoom in pretty close before using them.
To help you see exactly what you’re doing, Elements gives you several ways to adjust the tools and your view of the image. The following settings, which are on the right side of the dialog box, become active only after you click the Preview button:
Tool Options. You can click these color boxes to choose different hues for the Foreground and Background brushes using the Color Picker (Choosing Colors). This is also where you can adjust the brush cursor’s size, but that’s hardly ever necessary unless the brush is bigger than the area you want to select.
Preview. These options let you choose whether to see just the selected area or your entire image. You can also pick what kind of background you want Elements to display your selection against. You can choose None (the standard transparency checkerboard), or a black, gray, or white matte to see a temporary solid-colored background that may make it easier to check the edges of your selection. Selecting Mask gives you the black-and-white view of a layer mask (see Editing a layer mask); that way, you can paint more of a mask or remove the mask to reveal a larger selection. (Remember that what’s masked isn’t selected.) Rubylith (the brand name of the original red masking film) is just a fancy name for the red mask view as opposed to the black-and-white view you get by choosing Mask.
You also get some very helpful features for making sure your selection is absolutely perfect. These options are on the right side of the dialog box, listed under Touch Up (again, you have to click the Preview button before you can use them):
Feather. Enter the amount, in pixels, you want Elements to feather the edge of your selection. (The box on Feathering and Anti-Aliasing explains feathering.) You can actually enter a value here before clicking Preview, if you want, but you won’t see the results until you do.
Fill Holes. If Elements left some gaps in your selection, you may be able to fill them by clicking this button. This tool works only for holes that are completely surrounded by selected material, though. So if the edges of your selection have bites out of them, use the Smoothing brush instead, or give the area an extra click with the Foreground brush.
Defringe. If your selection has a rim of contrasting pixels around it, this button can usually eliminate them. Figure 5-17 shows what a difference defringing can make. You can choose a different number of pixels for Elements to consider when applying this command by entering a value in the Defringe Width box, but the standard setting is usually fine. Elements is pretty good about making clean selections, so you probably won’t click this button very often.
Tip
If the edges of your selection are ragged but the same color as the area you want, or if defringing alone doesn’t clean things up enough, try the Smoothing brush (Removing Objects from an Image’s Background). Just run it along the edge of your selection to polish it until it’s smooth.
Figure 5-17. Defringing is a big help in cleaning up the edges of selections. Top: Here’s a close-up of the top of the little mariner’s hat. The matte black background makes the ragged edges of the hat stand out. If you place this image into another graphic, it’ll look like you cut it out with dull nail scissors. Bottom: Here you can see how much softer the edges are after applying some defringing. Now you can place the figurine into another file without getting a cut-out effect; the hat will blend in believably. You don’t need the Extractor to defringe, though; you can use this command on any layer by going to Enhance→Adjust Color→Defringe Layer.