This is a bit of technical information regarding the weapon of choice of the retoucher, Photoshop, specifically dealing with the “Extract” tool in the “Filter” menu. While perhaps not necessarily useful to the entire audience, I have had enough people ask me about it that I feel like it could be a potentially valuable tidbit for anyone who uses the application, or works directly with someone who does.

For those of you not familiar, the extract tool was introduced in 1999 with the release of Photoshop 5.5, and was designed to help isolate (AKA clip) a desired subject matter from an image background. There were already many different ways to go about achieving this (paths, layer masks, etc.), but the extract tool was a more automated, and hopefully faster, way to clip. By way of telling the tool what is the desired target, what is the background, and then defining what area is between the two, you give extract a parameter in which to work, and after clicking “ok”, the tool does its best to decipher what is what, and gives you an isolated image.

Experimenting with it revealed that it wasn’t ideal for all images, as a lot of times it would include parts of the background that it shouldn’t have, or give the image some really torn up and jagged edges. And starting over to re-specify parameters and run the tool again would often result in varying degrees of the same type of mistake, making it more efficient and effective to go about clipping manually. But extract did prove itself very useful when dealing with one specific subject matter: Hair. Which, if you have never dealt with, can be a real pain.

In my experience, prior to this tool, isolating hair involved very complex and time consuming clipping paths, hand brushing a layer mask while still trying to retaining a natural look, or, in some instances, the purchase of a plug-in from a 3rd party developer.  Extract allowed for a much faster, automated and integrated solution to this specific subject matter, usually requiring only minimal tweaks afterwards; very useful and time saving. So why am i talking about?

In the most recent version of Photoshop, CS4, Adobe removed the extract command entirely, along with a smattering of other tools. From what I have read, the decision was based on determining whether or not each specific tool was worth the investment to modernize, plus future plans to revamp and update the programming of some tools for CS5, the up-and-coming version of the application. But it didn’t make it any less disappointing to dig into your brand new and exciting application, only to find that not only were some things not improved upon, they were omitted.

So what do you do if you relied on extract, to help speed up bulk people shots, or even some of the other tools that were removed? The way I went about it, until recently, was just keep using CS3, the previous version of the software, as it did the job nicely. Or, if that isn’t an option, Adobe included the removed items in the “Goodies” folder on the CS4 install DVD as plug-ins, which are also available as free downloads, Mac here, Windows here.

So while there is appreciation that I can still access and use these tools, I fully don’t understand why they didn’t just leave them in the application itself, where they were, thus bypassing the confusion. Anyway, now you know, I hope at least someone finds this useful!