Can Anyone Do This?

[jerryb]

hi,

1. on that 2nd picture.... the girls hair he could have extracted that.... if he wanted too.. but he would have done things differently and taken more time and that would have distracted from the main objective of the tutorial ... and that was what his phrase "artistic decision" smiling was really all about...

also if you noticed... his original image has good sharp, hi contrast image.... that make a huge difference....

you can only do so much.. either the image won't allow you to or one doesn't want to spend the extra time ....

2. for file sharing site if you need another choice .... you might look at this one... simple, free, no registration.....
http://www.pixentral.com/

also i started thread a couple of weeks ago... maybe it longer... that has a list of free fle share sites.... and there free ... so you may want to look those up and see which fits your needs...

3....

russlebrown is a character, it refreshing to see someone that high up in the company who not boring.. smiling...

you might be interested in mark thompson tutorials, he good, he has a easy relax
manner about him... what i like about his tutorials is he also many times address
issues and what he does to overcome and also i always like the little side tips he gives.... and some time that more important to me than the tutorial itself...
the only thing about his site i don't like is that he doesn't keep all his tutorial there... smiling.... they stay there for a few weeks then he rotates them out...
oh and you can download them!!! which i like to do...
http://www.msjphotography.com/

and on these tutorial that some i do a lot of is saving tuoritals...
the text and graphics i save mht file ....... getting quite collection...lol...

[Crapaud]

Hi, guys.

I'm a noob to Devppl, but have been lurking for a while and have finally registered.

I've had a go at this - don't know if I'm too late for this - but here's my attempt at the extraction ...It was a bit of a carry on to do and it only looks good depending on the background colour.

[jerryb]

hi crapaud,
that pretty good.... and i know what you mean about the background...

i don't know if it too late for abrogard.... but i would llike to know what was your workflow...

[abrogard]

I'm astonished to find I didn't reply to Jerryb earlier. Sorry about that. Thanks, Jerry, for a good helpful post. Thanks for the file sharing link. Thanks for the suggestions.

Crapaud: I think you've done it! That looks great to me.

I'd like to know how you did it - is that what jerry meant by 'workflow' ? If it is then, yep, can you please tell us what your workflow was?

ab

[Crapaud]

Thanks guys.

I did it in alpha channels. I forget the exact process as I tried a number of things, but I started with a blend of the blue into the green, probably with a lighten blend, and cranked up the contrast with a curve. It was pretty blocky and messy, but there was enough contrast to get torn in with the burn and dodge tool. Once I had a resonable outline I just painted out the areas with any detail to get a pure b&w with only the outline as greys. This was the result:



Abrogard, If you want the mask, I've posted the full size here. Just paste it into an alpha channel to use it as a selectiion.

If I'd thought about it at the time, I'd have taken a few screen shots.

[jerryb]

hi
thank you for getting back...
that looks good and better than mine...

sounds like you did a variation of channel masking..

that blending seems to work fine for you...

[Crapaud]

I do a lot of my work in alpha channels, Jerry. I mainly do colour corrections and image enhancement and don't like to make selections as I find they look artificial. So in most of my work I make global alterations. Often that means channel blending to introduce / reduce contrast and /or detail. Creating good quality masks is just an extension of that.

[jerryb]

hi,
i just noticed your new on board and like to welcome you....

sounds like you do a lot of retouch work and definitely be nice to have some
with your background.... for the most part i know mechanics of ps
but i don't do enough practice... grrr... to be good.... lol....

definitely be nice see you stay around...

[abrogard]

Hi

and thankyou Crapaud, that's excellent.

It is a demonstration of the need for practice, too, for I've tried alpha channel methods with burn and dodge and it didn't do it for me. Because I wasn't skillful enough and lost faith in the method, moved on to the next 'tutorial' I could find on the web.

Your demonstration of an end product that I find completely acceptable is enough to send me back to the method and start in with some practice.

I did notice at the time, with my picture, that blue and green appeared the avenue to go down.

But I didn't do a 'lighten blend', because I didn't know about it and I didn't do 'crank up contrast with a curve' - I take it that refers to a line on a 'graph' that you pull and push to vary some parameters? I saw such a thing one time in a tute that I never could find again.

My 'variations' have all been via a slider control. I'll find this curve.

And then burn and dodge. That'd be a practice makes perfect thing, I guess.

So if I understand what's going on we're extracting the figure, ultimately, by masking out without ever making a selection - which has the effect of making a de-facto selection of just what we want?

[Crapaud]

Thanks for the welcome Jerry, much appreciated. I'm terrible at design, so maybe we can learn from each other. My background is in pre-press, so I'm more technical than creative. I like to work on challenging photos - and there seem to be plenty on here - so I expect to be lingering awhile.

Abrogard, there are many ways of making a mask, it's just a case of deciding which one's the best for any particular image. Your pic is a special case: the blend was to create enough contrast so that when I applied the curve (the levels slider would be fine for this too) it didn't become too contrasty and blocky. I can't think of any other method that would give a decent result from a low contrast image.

... So if I understand what's going on we're extracting the figure, ultimately, by masking out without ever making a selection - which has the effect of making a de-facto selection of just what we want?

Not quite. The mask is created in channels, but we still have to make a selection: cntrl click on the channel (marching ants), make the layer active and then click on the make mask button on the layers palette.

A word of caution: channel blending is pretty advanced stuff so don't worry about it for the moment. It's better to start at the beginning and get a good foundation in the basics. Although there are lots of good tuts on the web there are many more terrible ones and some that are just wrong, wrong, wrong (I literally fell off my seat laughing a one).

Keep practising - it's the only way to get better.