need sig help

[Narutosan03]

been trying to make a sig but extracting characters from pics to sigs is hard esp with photoshop! How do u guys extract it easily, and perfectly?
PLz reply

[SirCharlesIII]

generaly, you crop it to the hieght you want, (usually the hieght of the sig, depends what you want the image to do) then zoom in (200 % is usually fine for the rough draft)...and take the lasso tool and trace the outline of the pic by hand (dont use the polygon lasso) and let go of the mouse button once you reach where you started. you'll have a pretty close,but still very rought dotted outline of the pic's outline. then, for acuracy and crispness, zoom in on the outline of the image you want, and start trimming up the selection. do this by holding shift and 'circleing' any areas you want to add, like if you didnt quite hit the edge of your pic perfectly, or holding alt and again 'circleing' any areas where you selected too much. if i wasnt lazy and wasnt having trouble ftp-ing, id add some screenshots to explain better. . anyway, work your way around the pic til your satisfied, and zoom back to 100 %. select the "move tool" ( top right on the tools panel) and then click anywhere within where you've selected, and drag it into your sig in progress.you can then move it around and add any effects you want.

hope this helps

ps. there are some shortcuts like useing the magic want and inverse selecting, but you'll find those out on your own if you arent scared of playing around. plus, i need to do homework.

[KDM]

I do it this way.

[SirCharlesIII]

heh, im going to try that next time i've never used the extract tool before, probably a mistake

[KDM]

Oh yeah. The tutorial says: "Open the extract tool: Image>Extract ..."

But if your using Photoshop 7.0 it's under:
Filter>Extract or Alt+Ctrl+X


After I extract the pic I use the history brush and eraser to make it all neat. Usually though I don't spend too much time on it since 1:I have a low tolerance for tedium. and 2:the project isn't very important.

Here's one where I acually took some time to "make it neat". Well, for what I wanted to use it for anyway.

[Narutosan03]

thnx for the replies, ive been using the magic wand tool but it takes for ever, and it always cut off a little part of the pic making it unsmooth. Ne suggestions?

[not_sponsored]

If you insist on using the magic wand tool you can always fix it up with the blur or smudge tool on the edges, it's smooths out nicely, just don't use too low of a tolerance...

[Darkflare]

no such thing as perfect extraction. i use the extraction method but all you have to do to make it "perfect" is to touch up the edges. i usually use a tiny bit of glow that is the same color as the BG