Hi all, Maria here with another edition of Thursday Tips! This time I am answering Rachel and Annie’s request for tips on extractions!

Extractions are super hawt right now, and the Quick Mask Mode will take your extractions from so-so to out-of-this-world, by making the technique extremely accurate. Here’s a quick tut on the Quick Mask mode (screen shots from PS CS, instructions are valid for CS and higher).

First, make a rough selection of what you want to extract. I usually use the magnetic lasso…quick, but very dirty.

Now switch to Quick Mask mode (in the toolbox look for the rectangle with the circle in the center below the foreground/background colors, and click on the right one – Edit in Quick Mask mode).

Once the mask has been applied you will notice that your selection (marching ants) has disappeared, but that everything outside of your selection area is now covered in a slightly transparent red (the mask). The mask may seem backwards to what you expect. What is masked is the un-selected portion, what is unmasked is the selection area. Zoom in to actual pixels and you can see how messy the magnetic lasso can be. Using a hard, round brush (reduce the spacing to 1% to get a smooth line) paint in the areas that should be masked but aren’t. Using the eraser (again – hard, round, spacing 1%), erase those areas that are masked but shouldn’t be.

When you have finished your masking, you can regain the selection (using your new mask as a guide) by clicking the left rectangle and circle tool (Edit in Standard Mode). Your marching ants will reappear, in their new, corrected, position. You can now either copy your extracted image out and paste onto your layout, or you can invert the selection (CTRL-SHIFT-I) and delete out the background. Get creative with this technique! Not only are full extractions made easier, but partial extractions are a breeze!

Here’s my completed layout with the partial extraction:

(layout credits: Traci Reed Joyful, Karah Fredricks Folded Corner Templates)

I just love this technique, especially on action layouts! Try it out on your next TRD layout!

Have more questions? Need more tips? Let us know what you’d like to learn, and you might see it on the next edition of Thursday Tips! Post a comment here with your question and the Hawt Mamas will try to accommodate!

Happy Scrapping!