Page 129 - Enhancing CAD Drawings with Photoshop

4386.book Page 112 Monday, November 15, 2004 3:27 PM

112 CHAPTER 4 YOU AND YOUR ENTOURAGE

Extracting a Plum Tree
You cannot always control the background conditions in your photographs, especially with large-
scale objects. This tutorial shows how to extract a 30-foot high plum tree from its natural outdoor
background. In some ways, this is more challenging than extracting a person, because of the translu-
cency of the leaves; the intermingling of foreground and background in an outdoor setting make it
more difficult. Let’s dive in.

1. Open the file PlumTree.psd from the CD. Figure 4.15 shows the starting image; a version of
this image is included in the color section.
2. Choose Filter Extract or press Alt+Ctrl+X to open the Extract dialog box. The image in Fig-
ure 4.15 is mostly shades of green on screen; choosing a highlight color other than green is
therefore appropriate. In the Tool Options group at the right, select Red as the Highlight
color from the drop-down menu.

Figure 4.15
The original plum tree
photo