I use to know how to do it, but it was a while ago and i forget. I have a picture of a lightning bolt on a black bg and i already have the lightning bolt already extracted but i still would like to know how i did it. lol I think it might have used the channels, but it might have been something different. Is there a easier way than just the channels.
You can just set it to screen, lighten, color dodge, or linear dodge if it's on a BLACK background. You probably used the extract tool? Maybe selected one of the 3 channels and used it as a mask?
it wasn't set to screen or lighten or any of those. It was on a transparent background. I think it was the layers and i just ctrl+clicked one of the rgb things.
1. Duplicate the original. 2. Go to channels. 3. Ctrl + Click one of the RGB things (the small thumbnail on the left). 4. Ctrl + Shift + I. 5. Spam delete intil your desired result (1-5 times usually). This is a technique I found while learning to extract. I think its a pretty decent technique myself =) Hope this helps.
any magic tools are not as accurate as your eyes. See also magic want tool and magnetic lasso tool... Pen tool ftw though
Magic tools work just fine when you're extracting from solid colours that arn't too similar. Assuming it's a solid yellow lightning bolt on a black background, setting the magic wand tolerance to 0 would get rid of the background instantly. But yeah, magic tools arn't too good for anything apart from that.
I've never done it Just download Picassa from Google & you can get all sorts of image effects, including black&white imagery
