Abstract: We present an approach for extracting reliefs and details from relief surfaces. We consider a relief surface as a surface composed of two components: a base surface and a height function which is defined over this base. However, since the base surface is unknown, the decoupling of these components is a challenge. We show how to estimate a robust height function over the base, without explicitly extracting the base surface. This height function is utilized to separate the relief from the base. Several applications benefiting from this extraction are demonstrated, including relief segmentation, detail exaggeration and dampening, copying of details from one object to another, and curve drawing on meshes.