Photoshop Tutorial: Extracting Images from Backgrounds

Introduction: Extracting images in Photoshop is a main tool many professional digital artists and photo editors use when working. It allows you to place anything, anywhere. You can extract absolutely anything; people, objects, animals, buildings, and so on. There are many different ways of extracting images as well. We’ll start off with the easiest way. Once you are comfortable with this method, experiment with other ways to extract your photos.

Step One: Open your image up in Photoshop in JPEG format. It is extremely suggested that you start off with a subject on a white or light colored background. This will make it a lot easier to extract the image and then blend it into a new background, despite quality.
Open your image up in Photoshop in JPEG format. It is extremely suggested that you start off with a subject on a white or light colored background. This will make it a lot easier to extract the image and then blend it into a new background, despite quality.
Open your image up in Photoshop in JPEG format. It is extremely suggested that you start off with a subject on a white or light colored background. This will make it a lot easier to extract the image and then blend it into a new background, despite quality.

Step Two: Go to Filter, then Extract. When the window opens up, click the marker tool in the upper right hand corner. Now tick the “smart highlighting” box. Depending on the size of the edges you want to extract, choose an appropriately sized brush.

Step Three: Move the mark completely around the edges of you want extracted. Once you go completely around the image, click the paint can tool and fill inside the green lines. This will make the image a blue color (don’t worry, your image is NOT this color). This will also make sure you get the entire image extracted and not just the outlines in green.

Step Four: Click OK, and now the extracted image will be on your canvas without the original background with it.

Step Five: If the image does not have nice smooth edges, try the process again or use the eraser tool to fix the edges that aren’t even or jagged. The eraser tool allows to remove unwanted bits and pieces. Otherwise, you can move on to the next step.

Step Six: Now choose your background. You can choose basically anything you want. You can also use your own background images or find one on a free stock photo website.

Step Six: Now you can paste the extracted image on the background. Click Control+C�¯�¿�½ to copy, and Control+V to paste.

Step Seven: You can blend easily by blurring the edges of the extracted background, or simple by adding a filter. You can also move around the extracted images with the pointer. You will need to flatten the image to apply a filter for both at the same time.

It’s as simple as that! Remember smooth edges are the best, as well as an appropriate background.