Practical Photoshop May 2022

This is without doubt the easiest way to remove a background, it often only takes a single click. It won’t work perfectly every time, but even if it doesn’t come up with the goods, it can still be a useful starting point for making a cut out, as you can go on to paint on the resulting layer mask, or right-click the mask thumbnail and use Select and Mask to improve it. 01 OPEN QUICK ACTIONS Quick Actions are like Photoshop shortcuts for common effects and editing techniques. They’re great for beginners and those looking to expand their repertoire of skills. You can find contextsensitive Quick Action buttons by going to the Properties panel (Window >Properties) or access the full list in the Discover panel (Cmd/Ctrl+F). 02 REMOVE THE BACKGROUND Highlight a layer and…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3xlRYsD Select and Mask is the most comprehensive tool for removing backgrounds in Photoshop. Not only is it a good tool for making cutouts, it’s also often an essential stop-off to improve selections made using other tools and techniques. Go to Select>Select and Mask to get started. You’ll also see a Select and Mask button at the top whenever a selection tool is active. 1 BEGIN YOUR SELECTIONS IN SELECT AND MASK You can either make an initial selection with any Photoshop selection method before entering Select and Mask, or instead open the command then use the Quick Selection tool or the Select Subject button (which uses artificial intelligence to isolate the subject). 2 OVERLAY VIEWS Hit For use the dropdown to see differing views. The Onion Skin view lets you fade…

As the name suggests, the Background Eraser tool is useful for removing backgrounds in your photos. Whether you want to cut out an object, make a background transparent or replace it with a new one, this tool can be very handy. It works by seeking out edges and similar colours in the backdrop, then erasing them. So it’s sort of like a combination of the magic wand and eraser tools. 01 DUPLICATE THE LAYER The Background Eraser works by detecting similar coloured pixels and erasing them, so it’s a bit like the Magic Wand tool except it erases rather than selects. In order to keep the tool nondestructive, begin by duplicating your background layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) then click the eye icon next to the lower copy to hide it. This way, you can…

Channels let us make selections based on the colour information in the image, so if the area we want to cut out has a contrasting colour or brightness with the backdrop then Channels can be hugely useful for precise selections in very little time. When we Cmd/Ctrl+click a channel we load the white parts as a selection, so to creare a cutout we simply need to duplicate one of the channels, modify it to make one part white and the rest black, then make our selection and convert it to a mask… 01 CHOOSE A CHANNEL Open an image and go to Window>Channels. Click through the channels to see which gives the best contrast between subject and backdrop. Here it’s the Red Channel. Duplicate your chosen channel by dragging it to the…

Blend If is a wonderful tool if there’s a difference in brightness between the background you want to remove, and the one you want to replace it with. So it’s ideal for knocking out a white or black backdrop. You can also use it to target the Reds, Greens or Blues. Double-click the top layer to open the Blending Options. Here you’ll find the Blend If controls. The top slider lets you control the transparency of the currently selected layer. Drag the white or black slider in and any pixels beyond that point will become transparent. If we drag the highlights slider in here, we make the highlights transparent, which knocks out the white backdrop. The further in we drag, the more highlights are hidden. By contrast, if we drag the…

Focus Area (Select>Focus Area) lets you make automatic selections based on what’s in-focus in your images, so you can create precise cut-outs in seconds. It’s ideal for images like this where the background is a similar colour- we can zero in on the sharp parts – the bird and the plant it’s perched on – while excluding all the blurred areas. 01 CHOOSE A FOCUS RANGE Go to Select>Focus Area. Use the ‘In-Focus Range’ slider to find the sweet spot between isolating the subject and picking up the background detail. Hit F to cycle through all the overlay views. Depending on the image you may need to tidy up by painting over areas with the Add or Subtract brushes (on the left of the box) in order to pick out or exclude…