Object Extractor Tool X 3 - What's the deal with this thing?

[Hooterville]

I have played around with the new Object Extractor tool in X3 with pretty bad results.

This thing eats away lots of the image that you are trying to extract.

Is there some trick to using this tool that I'm missing or is it just broken also?

[LeviFiction]

I don't know about broken. I've managed to use it fairly well.

I would imagine that it's pretty close to similar colors and can't distinguish.

I've actually had worse results with imageskill's BackgroundRemover plugin. Very pleased with it.

And as far as I know you outline, fill in the area you want to keep and it extracts.

It's not perfect, I agree with that. It doesn't do any unmixing of colors around thin or blury areas like hair. Which is annoying.

And it will occassionally bite into the character I'm trying to extract. For situations like that I just duplicate the image and then use the cloning tool to work back in the areas that were removed.

[Hooterville]

Thanks, Levi

I just find that the magic wand does a much better job than this object extractor.

Even on pictures with a solid background the magic wand works way better.

Maybe I just don't understand this new tool.

[LeviFiction]

Or it's another gimick tool that isn't as good as it could be and they added it to lure new customers. Hard to say. But for what I do it works great. Though now I have to try it on a solid background object.

[Hooterville]

Or it's another gimick tool that isn't as good as it could be and they added it to lure new customers. Hard to say. But for what I do it works great. Though now I have to try it on a solid background object.

I believe you got it right here.

It's another gimmick

[sjj1805]

I have found that to use an image extractor (several different software packages have this) then you are better off putting your mouse to one side and attaching a "pen and tablet" to your computer.

[janetweber]

I got Paintshop Pro X3 because they said the object extractor was better than the background removal plugin furnished with the X2 version.

In may experience the object extractor will pixelate the image you are working with. I mean it put really big bloks in the image.

Janet

[Chromenut]

I've had nothing but positive experience with the extractor in X3. I did have to make a few adjustments, like I've found that brush size is very critical to getting it right and not pixellating your object. The other critical item is to INSURE that your fill tool is actually filling in the entire object before you extract it. That has been my biggest cause of concern as it's left some behind and the new object is now pixellated.

One thing that does bug me about it is that there's not an "undo" button, only a reset to original. That's a PITA when you've gone through detailed manipulations to outline your object then you have to start all over again. Just happened to me a few moments ago, darn it. They need a simple undo tool in it that allows you to take out the last manipulation only.

I also agree with SJJ that to really outline well, use a pen and tablet if you have one, and really reduce the size of the paintbrush you're using for the outline.

I find that I usually have to do some light cleanup work on the image that I've extracted, but I consider that normal as no tool is going to extract perfectly.

Here's some examples using the tool and a mouse (I'm way more on target with my pen and pad, but for this example I used the mouse) and how my extraction worked out. I do this a lot, have a client/friend who wants to see a loose stone in a specific setting that they've seen online, so I match the two up in a few simple steps then email them the sample.

Pardon the size, I've made them small just for an example and to save some space...

original photo (shrunk way down for here):


Let's say my client wants to see that center stone in a setting... simply extract it:


Clean up any buggers you have:


Then you should be ready to paste this into the new setting:


And your final result:


Now it's not perfect, these are rough but I just now threw them together for this site, and I've skipped one step here that is fitting it into the setting properly, but you get the gist of it. Sorry if I've gone too basic here, but I use this almost every day and find the tool to be invaluable in my work. I hear a lot of complaints around here about it, but if you set it up right it works great.

[pdxrjt]

I finally tried the object extractor. I had a nice picture of some colorful buildings in Mexico....with some nice tiny red "danger" cones out front. The object remover seemed to do a good job. I didn't also try removing them with clone brush or anything, but it did a pretty nice job IMHO. Like the idea of a pen and tablet though!!

[Chromenut]

One thing I have noticed, if your background or surroundings of the object you want to extract are too "busy", the tool has trouble determining the difference between object and surroundings.

[Hooterville]

Are you guys promoting the background layer first or just extracting from the original background?

[LeviFiction]

Again I personally duplicate the layer or at least duplicate the image (Shift + D) so I can refer back to the original image if I need to rework anything or fill stuff in.

Fun note, with all other background removal tools I wasn't able to un-erase those portions. But instead of cloning in any rough edges PSP makes you can just use the eraser to erase or unerase portions that were left in or cut out. Fun stuff.

But I always duplicate the layer.

[Chromenut]

I try to duplicate the background layer on every photo I work on, as a just in case. Normally I'll dup it, then turn of the visibility to it so I don't see it unless I need it. Kind of like it's there, just in case, and if not, I delete the layer prior to completing my work.

[Hooterville]

I have given up on this tool.

[Chromenut]

Sorry hooterville, it's working fine for me. I found that adjusting brush size is critical to a clean extraction, as is the pixel depth of the subject photo. My smaller photos, 680x and smaller, seem to leave behind a lot of garbage when extracting, but those larger with more depth seem to have less of a problem. Also, using this tool to extract a subject who's colors are near to those of the background is very troublesome.

Mind you, this is not intended to be the "be all and end all" of tools. There are still other tools that may suit your purposes. Myself, I find that I use the Freehand Selection Tool with it set for Point to Point selection, more often than the extraction tool. That way I can clearly demarc the edges of my extracted subject and I get a cleaner extraction. Here, let me show you two examples of that, and no laughing at the subjects in the photo (meaning my geekiness)...

This was a sunset photo I took of a pier in Montserrat, then added in myself and my wife separately...


Another quite similar doing the same thing:


Mind you, they aren't the best, I created these for a couple of reasons, mainly to see if I could pass them off to my wife as real photos, but also to test the tools.