Trouble Extracting

[Leoneri]

Ok, so I try getting stocks for sigs I make, no problem right? Wrong.

So far the only method I know of is using the magic wand, set tolerance to 25, and uncheck contiguous.

I click the background of the image then hit Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection. Now here is the problem. Sometimes it will select the image and it looks normal, but I try to paste it on a background and sometimes there will be white holes in the image where the background will show through. Like this:

Other times, I will invert the selection and it won't go to the stock, but outline half of it, then the other half or the other portion will be selected as if it had part of a rectangle on it. Like this:

So how do I fix this? Are there sure-fire easy ways to extract an image?

 

[Bedi Vegeta]

So how do I fix this? Are there sure-fire easy ways to extract an image?

That's just it. There aren't. The magic wand may seem like, well, a magic wand at first, a quick easy way out, but you will always get terrible results. If you want to properly cut out an image, it takes a lot of time and patience.

There are lots of methods, there are a couple that I use. The first method involves the Polygonal Lasso. You just zoom in on the image a bit, select the tool, and start tracing the outline of what you want to cut out with it, using very small fine lines to catch all of the detail. It takes time, and you have to do it all in one go, but it is pretty straightforward.

Another method is to add a layer mask to the layer the image is on in the layers toolbox. Then you simply get the brush tool, set it to black, and paint over everything you don't want to keep, using a finer brush tip for the detailed edges. I find this more fiddly, and you can't get the nice clean lines that you can get with the Polygonal Lasso, but because it's just a layer mask, you don't actually lose the image, and you can edit the mask later on.

 

[Leoneri]

Thanks for the advice.