Happy New Year everyone!! I hope everyone is ready to jump into a new year of Saturday Specials!!  I love to use extractions in my LOs.  Alot of times I use them for blending a big picture into the background and I want to get rid of the background of the photo and highlight just the main subject, or to put a person just hanging out with my elements.  Or you can even create a 3-d look and pop a person out of a picture frame like I am going to do in my LO today.
I used to struggle with extraction and used the magic extractor tool in PSE but it never was very magical for me.  One day I stumbled upon the technique I am going to show you today.  It works the best if you have a fairly uncomplicated background that contrasts with your subject (these are the best photos to extract anyway..) So lets get to it shall we?

Here is my original photo..

Now the tool I want to use is the “magic eraser”.  You can find it by left clicking your eraser tool.

Hover your eraser over the largest spot of the background and click.  See what happens.  (If the eraser chooses to select too much just undo and click somewhere else.  It is erasing similar colors here.  So in my case, it is going to get all the blues until it hits something different.)  Here is what happened:

Notice my problem areas.  There is blue line around my DH and DD and the tree is still there.  First I will first get rid of the tree by simply drawing a box around it and pressing control X (or Cut). 
Now I have to get rid of the line.  My first tool will be the magic eraser again.  We will see if this will work.  You want to zoom in pretty close to make sure you are clicking in just the right place.  You will also want to make sure the eraser is not picking up too much of the subject by mistake.  (Remember there is always the undo button!! Nothing is permanent here!! LOL!)

Voila!  The magic eraser tool worked for me this time. And just so you are aware getting rid of the smaller details takes some patience and alot of clicking.
But if the magic eraser wasn’t doing the trick (because the background colors close to the main subject are too similar) I also use the magnetic lasso tool to drag around the image like this..

(obviously for example only.. there was nothing to clean up there!)
Now all I have to do is clean up the image a bit.  I want to get rid of the fly aways on my DDs hair because it is impossible to get the blue out of those.  So I use the regular eraser tool and a dry media brush (or any brush that will look more natural and not have harsh edges) to erase that and any other rough edges.  Here is my finished image:

To use this in an layout you will want to save it as a PNG (so the background will stay clear).  Here is my finished LO.  As I said in the beginning of this post I wanted to pop her out of the frame. So I put the original photo under the frame and matched my extraction on top of the frame.  Then I deleted the part of the regular picture that wasn’t in the frame.  I did have to duplicate the frame and drag it on top and do a litte erasing to make it overlap correctly.  You can check out a tutorial on how to do that here. Feel free to ask in the thread if you have any questions on how to do this!

(Credits- Land of Fantasy by Sahlin Studios and Brittish Designs, So this is Love by Sahlin Studios and Foam Stamped Alpha Sorbet (recolored) by Sahlin Studios)
Here are a few examples from my gallery to show some other ways to use extractions:
Give your extraction a shadow and make it look like the person is standing in the LO.. in this one my DD is holding onto the Balloons!

(Credits: Let them Eat Cake by WM Squared)
Another great thing about extractions is you are free from the original composition of the picture. In this blended extraction I was able to move them closer together to really play up that look of adoradation my DD has in her eyes!

(Credits- A Knights Tale by Brittish Designs and Man in the Moon Designs)
And finally here is some great inspiration from our CT member Li!

(credits – Bumps and Blahs by Kaye Winecki)
Please upload your LO to the SATURDAY SPECIAL GALLERY and link back to this thread in the forum so we know you are playing along. 

This challenge will run through January 31.  No double-dipping… your LO must be unique to this challenge.  Everyone who participates will receive one point.  You’ll also get an additional point if you use a NEW ScrapMatters Product (released within the last week.)  Please let us know in the forum that you’ve used a new product.  Also, one special LO will be awarded another point.  That’s 3 possible points for this challenge!

Now get to extracting!! I can’t wait to see what you come up with!!

-Amanda (Panders77)