Zarriff

I know there are threads like this already, but this is for improvements and not a "how to" thread.

Okay, I've gotten much better at extracting and cleaning up images since I began walling in early August. Hard to believe it hasn't been very long. I just wanted to share my strategies for extracting and cleaning, and get insight on how to improve on this, afterall; there is always room for improvement.

I personally used to use GIMP, because I couldn't find the default eraser in PhotoShop *gasp*. I found it, and now I use PhotoShop CS 8.0. I use a combination of the free handed lasso, the polygonal lasso, and occasionally the magnetic lasso at 300-500% zoom.. I ussually use a feather of 1 pixel for smoother, less pixelated edges. I also clean it up by sometimes taking just the eraser about 1-2 pixels away from the edge to clean up any fuzzyness. I use a color for the layer undeneath that contrasts most of the colors around the edge of the image to easily see mistakes. Cleaning an image is a bit more difficult for me. All I know ho to do is noise-median an set to overlay or lighten, which REALLY throws off the coloring. I would also like to know the best ways to remove a smal bit of text or a fold line from a scan. Since we now have an extraction request thread, any improvement would be a huge one.

I would like to know the process others follow, the tools you use, the programs you use, and any other techniques used to improve the quality of your work. If I am doing anything that may backfire, I would like to know. No use in improving something that is useless. ^_^

Thank ya much!

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Kyuuketsuki Niko

When I first started, I used Paint Shop Pro, but now I live for Photoshop.
To extract images, I use the polygonal lasso tool almost religiously, but I do enter quick mask mode to clean up the stuff that sometimes gets away.
To clean up the image and remove unwanted stuff, I use a combination of the clone stamp, patch tool and healing brush. If whatever is on the image is too much for those, I try to re-CG it in Photoshop or Illustrator.
Since you said that you use CS, I recommend buying the Photoshop CS Bible. It's an awesome book (albeit expensive) that will tell you ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about image extraction/cleaning etc. ^__^
I use it religiously.

Zackraa

i use the gimp because photoshop costs money

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Zarriff

That could help immensly. I had enough money to blow on a second monitor and a video card to make things go quicker for it, so I"m sure the book will be no problem. I'll have to wright that down. As for the quick mask, I've never used it but probably should. I'll have to look into that.

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obliteration

In my experience with the polygonal lasso tool and it's kin, I've found that the tool can work well provided you've adequate experience with it, but even an assload of experience with it will rarely give you the results you wish for. Even if you end up doing a decent job, you're still left with a good while of time to spend cleaning up and reconstructing the areas you screwed up on. It's archaic, simply put.

A little over a year ago, I had finally come to the point where I couldn't be assed to struggle with the tool any longer and so I sought to find alternative methods for extraction. In doing so, I ended up coming across Shinta's pen tool tutorial (click) and after some practice I got the hang of it. Before hand, I - and others, judging by what I've read from members here on AO's previous incarnate - were confuzzled by the tool, and even somewhat imitated. Working with paths just seemed to complex to a n00b graphic designer. But after toying around with it a bit, I came to the conclusion that it's superior; that is, for me at least.

With the polygonal lasso, the your end product is as is, every mistake is left to you to fix by other means, unless you care to spend another three hours or so on a mulligan. Of course, if you find a bigger scan and want that copy extracted, you'll have to do it all over again, anyway (go right ahead and take a small extraction, resize it upwards to fit the dimensions of a larger version of your image, and extract the larger image using the load selection feature; looks terrible, no?). With the pen tool, you can convert your work path into a vector shape should you come across a larger version of the image you're working on in the future. Oh yeah, you can save your paths, so if there's anything you want to go back and redo, you can simply select the path and make the necessary adjustments via the convert point / add anchor / delete anchor tools. Moreover, should you choose to forego that editing method, you can use a one pixel path stroke to create a uniform outline masking unsightly artifacts left over.

Oh, and did I mention the pen tool is quicker? With the polygonal lasso, I'd waste away some three to four hours working at 800% zoom. In contrast, I spend usually an hour to two hours working at various zooms from 200% to 500%.

Personally, I think it's immensely better.

As far as image cleaning goes, I use a combination of the clone stamp tool, the blur tool, the smudge tool, the eyedropper tool, the pen tool, the dodge and burn tools, and the brush tool. Filters usually can't do all the work for you, but they can help.

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