Photoshop - removing a person from a background using masks

If necessary, review the Photoshop tutorial video to remember the steps involved.
Also, review the video and instructions from the post below this one so you're familiar with some of the basics.

Scroll to the spot where we learned this: Quick selection - putting a subject on a different background: 19:40 - 29:12

There is also a step by step tutorial HERE if you prefer following these instructions. The only thing missing is the last few steps with the Colour Blending mode.

Removing a subject from a background and putting them on a different background.

The purpose of this exercise is to practice what was learned yesterday and be able to remove a person from one background and put them on another background.

This will lead up to your major assignment in this unit, where you will take a photograph of yourself and place it on another background to make a movie poster.

Procedure:

1.    Find a minimum of two different photos for this exercise – one MUST be a person (ideally on a white background), the other can be any landscape, or background setting you like.

2.    Save both the photos in your TIJ folder in your home drive so you can find them again.

3.   
With Photoshop open, open the two photos into Photoshop so that you have two tabs open at the top of your screen.

4.    Using the MOVE tool grab the image of the person and drag it up to the tab of the background photos, wait for the photo to open and then without letting go, move the person photo down into the background photo. Then let go.

5.    You will now have both images in one file.

6.    You may need to resize the person photo. Try to find photos that are at least 1000 pixels x 1000 pixels in size.

7.    Resizing – review the previous tutorial. Control T (or Edit, Free Transform)

will bring up the bounding boxes around the image. Don’t forget to press SHIFT (and ALT if you want the image to remain centered while you resize it) and ONLY GRAB BY THE CORNER NODES. Do not let go of Shift until you have stopped resizing.

8.   
Quick Selection:

Using the quick selection tool, slowly select the person from

the background. If you select too much, simply press ALT

and select the parts you want to remove. When you stop

pressing ALT, the quick selection tool will resume ADDING selections. Keep doing this until you have selected the entire person.

9.    Refine Edge: 

Using the View button you can change the view to see the image on the background layer. You can also make any adjustments you like, but watch carefully how it impacts the edge of the image.

10. Most importantly, make sure you click the button at the bottom where it says Output to Decontaminate colors. This will output your selection to a New Layer with Layer Mask. Click OK

11. Now you can move and position the person layer or resize again if necessary.

12. Advanced Step - Colour blending – Click on the MASK for the Layer that has the person photo on it. If you press Control and Click, it will bring up the selection around the photo that you just did. You will see the marching ants around the person.

13. While that is selected, click on the background layer. You are basically copying a piece of the background layer in the exact shape of the person to place on top of the person and blend into them so the colour and lighting match more closely.

14. With the background layer highlighted, and the marching ants around the person, click Control J (or go to the Layer menu, choose New – Layer Via Copy)

15. This will give you an exact copy of the shape of the person cut out from the background layer as a separate layer.

16. Move that layer so that it’s on top of the person layer. This will completely cover up the person.

17. Now choose Color in the Blending Modes.

18. This will apply the colour from that new layer, and blend it in with the layer below. Now change the Opacity to approximately 20%.

19. Make any other adjustments to try to match exposure by using the adjustment layers. Or just leave it as is and SAVE AND HAND IT IN!

20. SAVING YOUR WORK: Choose SAVE AS in the FILE MENU. Save this in YOUR TIJ folder in your Home Drive. Save it as YOURNAME_QUICKSELECT.psd then MOVE the file into the Silverman DropOFF folder. Congratulations! You’re done!

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Photoshop Composite Tutorial

Please watch this video again if you need to (or if you didn't see it yesterday).


Your assignment:

1. Find 3 different photographs in google images. (Note: try to find images approximately the same size. You can see the size by hovering over them with your cursor - you will see a number x another number that looks like this 1600x1200. Those are the number of pixels. Just try to get images that have at least one of the dimensions over 1000 pixels.

2. Save these photographs by clicking on them from the search page and then right click to Save Image As - make sure you save them into your TIJ folder that you should by now have made in your home drive.

3. Open up Photoshop CS6. From there open up each of the three photographs. You will see three tabs across the top of your Photoshop window (just like in the video).

4. Using the Move tool - pictured at the top of the A panel of tools - it's the one right at the top of the tool panel in Photoshop - grab anywhere in one of the images and pull it up onto one of the other tabs. Don't let go until you've centered it over that image. You can press Shift to place it exactly on top of the image.

5. Now you should have one file with two layers (and two images). Repeat this until you have all three images in one file. You can close the other tabs now.

6. Decide which one will be your base image and which ones will go on top. You can then begin erasing parts of the images on top to reveal the images underneath. Make sure you only erase the parts you want to. In the next few days I'll show you how to do this without damaging the images, so if you make a mistake you can easily fix it. For now, just go as carefully as you can.

7. Things to remember.

• You can only do things to a layer if that layer is highlighted. So click on that layer in the layers panel to highlight it. Otherwise you'll be erasing the wrong layer.
• You can adjust the opacity if you want part of the base image to be seen through one of the other images. That's up to you, however you want it to look.
• Save your finished image as a psd. Put your name in the file name and call it Name_Composite1.psd. Then put it into the drop off folder.
• The eraser tool is the 5th tool down on the B tool panel above. You can change the size of the erase by using the right and left Square Brackets on your keypad. Or by changing the brush size and hardness on the top menu bar once you've selected the eraser.
• You can resize any image by selecting Edit (on the top menu) and Free Transform. OR CTRL T (keyboard shortcut). That will give you a bounding box. You MUST grab by the corner while pressing SHIFT while you resize the image, otherwise you will distort it (make it too wide or too tall). You can also press ALT at the same time to keep it centered.
• Have fun! I'll be back tomorrow to help you with anything and to check your work.