Left panel: run of the extinction in the direction to Alicante 7. The data have been obtained by applying the technique of Cabrera-Lavers et al. (2005) to the red clump giant population within 20′ from the nominal cluster centre. Right panel: same for the field surrounding RSGC3. Both runs are pretty similar. The sudden increase in the reddening at  ~ 6 kpc provides a direct estimate on the distance to both clusters.