Yeah so I’m a little late on this. Primarily because I’m no designer and I don’t use Photoshop that much. But I just found out that the Extract filter has been removed from CS4. Or maybe CS3 too? I didn’t notice until I needed to use it at work today where I just had to take out some cats and dogs out of their backgrounds.

So, with some googling I found this article by John Nack. There he explains why they took Extract and other filters/plugins away. I still wish they retained Extract though, it’s kinda useful for us noob Photoshop users :p Thankfully you can still install the missing features. Just follow these steps:

1. Download the plugins package. Download here for Mac, and here for Windows.
2. In the package you should find 3 language folders. Open the one you need (ie English) and copy the child folder named Goodies and paste it somewhere safe like the Photoshop application folder. That’s /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Mac and somewhere in C:/Program Files/ for Windows (sorry I can’t be too precise).
3. Open Photoshop. Go to Preferences > Plug-Ins. Find a setting named Additional Plug-Ins Folder and set that to the Goodies folder.
4. Restart Photoshop.

That should do it.

4 Responses to Installing the missing Extract feature in Photoshop CS4

Stephen October 8, 2009 at 11:34 pm

Thank you THANK YOU for posting this online. I was having trouble getting it to work.

Shiki October 9, 2009 at 7:39 am

Glad I could help!

Dan November 30, 2009 at 11:55 pm

Magnificent! you are a legend!

Audra September 27, 2010 at 3:15 am

thank you SOOO much, i’m in the process of developing my website and marketing materials and even adobe site didn’t help as much as you did!! and i even have a graphic design background (ok it’s been 21 years since school and i missed a lot of computer training :) , but again thank you!!