Post Processing help

I am trying to extract a dog's head from a photograph, either with a transparent background or as a silhouette. I have Lightroom 4 and Paint Shop Pro X3 and Photoshop CS2 (inherited when son upgraded to CS4). I have tinkered with posterization, gray scale, and outline but can't seem to isolate the head like I want it.

Any suggestions?

Image I am working with:



Thanks!

Magic Wand?????

Chuck, are you going to put your head on that rocket avatar you have?

John

Chuck, I will be home tonight (after 7pm) on Friday or Sunday evening if you want to bring the file over and we can see what Photoshop CS6 can do and I have a few other programs that may work also…I have the OnOne suite and it has a set up just for extracting items.

Give me a call if you want to go that route. nine seven two seven four three eight three seven six.

Oops…forget Sunday, I have a photoshoot.

quick first pass with paint.net.
let me know if you want something bigger, cleaner or even close to what you wanted..

Ah, thanks fellas.

I am actually in Orlando until Saturday and Sunday is booked.

I will look closer at Gary's work when I get back. Scott, I may get together with you on a later weekend - I would just like to see how you approach some of these.

my attempt....

Thanks, Duke, what software did you use?

Part of this is to learn how to do it and maybe locate a new product to learn.
Anybody familiar with Photoshop Elements?

Elements is more of a 'presentation' software like slideshows and such. At least that's how I've used it in the past.

Oh. Sorry. I didn't even read which forum this was in. I just saw the request for help.

I used Photoshop CS6

I saved the image from here to my desktop and then used CS6 to open it up.

When it was open I used the "CMD+J" (CTRL+J for windoze) shortcut to create a new layer.

Once I had a new layer I then used the "Quick Selection" wand type tool to select the dog.



I then copied the selection, and then pasted the selection back on the image. I then deleted the prior layer and was left with just a "floating dog" on transparent background.

I then went and selected "save for web" under the file menu.



And saved it as a .png file keeping the transparency that was created by my deleting the areas around the dog in the original image.



All that was left was for me to try and attach it here for you, but it was too big I guess to meet the forum rules, so I uploaded it to my smugmug and linked to it for you and all to see.

....

...
Hope that helps...

When reading TWT by only ever clicking "unread" posts up in the top right hand corner of the screen when logged in, I don't ever really recognize which forum/section of TWT I am in.

...

M38A1 said:

Elements is more of a 'presentation' software like slideshows and such. At least that's how I've used it in the past.

Click to expand...

You can do basically what Duke did in PS Elements. Or the version I have. It just doesn't do all the fancy things PS does. I'm playing with a copy of PS 5.5 and getting a kick out of the content aware fill and content aware healing. I understand that is even better in PS 6.

I have a new iMac and it is fast too.

Duke said:

Hope that helps...

Click to expand...

Yes it does, thanks!

Chuck…my Sunday night freed up if you still need the original file worked on.

Duke…great job as usual!

Thanks for all the help and suggestions, especially Gary and Duke for providing something to work with. I tinkered with them a bit but was never happy with the black silhouette.

Here is what I ended up with:





It is for a memorial to our pooch here.

Thanks again.

Chuck,

I feel your pain. It's amazing how attached we get to our canine and feline family members. If you haven't, check out petloss.com Carla has gotten a lot of comfort from her association with the site.