Topic awaiting preservation: The extract filter - advanced techniques

I have this image of a chair on a carpet rug that I want to extract
using the extract filter but I wonder which way is the smartest to do it.

I'd rather not paint the whole outline by hand using thew Edge Highligter
beacuse it will take a long time but I cannot use the magic wand either
because the background is too complex to select with just one click.

Um, anyone have an expert tip on this one?

Could I perhaps do something with the channels to create an outlined
alph-channel first, to use in the extract tool?

Any suggestions or tips in this matter will be greatly apriciated.

Extract is tricky to use and often doesn't cut out the object as nice as you'd like it to - so I'd stay away from it. It's good for getting the main object, but not the little details with it.

There are many possible ways to do this - read up on channel masks, paths, layer masks, and lasso.

"Nothin' like a pro-stabbin' from a pro." -Weadah

Hmm, I once saw a clip with Russel Brown showing off his techniques in the extract filter.
http://www.wacom.com/top40/top40.cfm?last=Brown

I'll post a summary here if I find it again...

The pen tool is my favorite extracion tool. You can get as much or as little detail as you like, a selection, vector mask, bla, bla.

Yes I too use the pen tool for the same reasons as docilebob

:::tao::: ::cell::

Yep, Pen tool is usually my first choice.

This works quite well also.

If you want to use the Extract filter a lot of times what I'll do later is come back with the history brush afterwards to replace anything unexpectedly erased during extract.

:::11oh1:::

I usually work with quick mask. It's all about the brush, then. Don't forget to change the mode to suit your needs.

The Photoshop Engineers and Bruce Fraser are saying that extract makes also a color decontamination... that is why it does not create a layer mask, instead of removing the "surroundings" of the extracted image...

Pierre Courtejoie