Adobe Photoshop Tutorial – Clean Image Extractions

Now this is a very simple Photoshop technique that I use everyday It’s so awesome what makes it so awesome is the fact is saves you time and allows complex extractions made easier and faster!

Step 1: Find Your image

First thing you need to find is your image for the tutorial I have chosen this image: -

For the best results choose an image with a White background or one that can have it’s background colour manipulated to White.

Step 2: Channels

All Channels in Photoshop

Open your image in Photoshop and then select the channels panel.

Now duplicate the blue channel and deselect the blue channel and select the channel you just made.

Duplicated Blue Channel in Photoshop.

Step 3: Extract the Image

Now use the levels editor to darken the image.

Blue Channel after Levels Adjustment

Then if you need to get a few White parts paint on the channel with a black paint brush.

Image after removing white parts with the paintbrush tool

Finally, Enable the RGB channel CTRL + click the duplicated blue channel you made.

Enable the RGB Layer then CTRL + Click the "blue copy" layer

Now CTRL + I the selection and finally cut the image out with CTRL + X and paste it into a new Photoshop document.

Invert the selection with CTRL + SHIFT + I then extract the image with CTRL+ X

Step 4: New Document & Convert to Smart Object

Create a new document and paste the layer in and if your running cs4-cs5 convert the layer to a smart object.

In a new document the Image layer is conveted to a smart object.

Final Image & A Few Pointers

Finally scale your image down and now you have an image on a transparent background that’s scalable to an extent.

If you end up with some White edges create a mask and on a low opacity brush setting simply brush them away works best when using a graphics tablet.

Here is what I’ve done with the image: -

Final image with some extra effects

Conclusion

I find using this technique saves so much time and allows for cleaner extractions and you should try this technique and find out how much time it saves you.

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