PHLEARN €? Photoshop Compositing: Masking And Cutting Out Subjects |BEST|

PHLEARN – Photoshop Compositing: Masking and Cutting Out Subjects

The tutorials just get better on PHLearn. Forget about stressing when cutting the hair of your subject out. Just use channels to make the process a whole lot easier. Thanks Aaron Nace!! I will be alot more confident when cutting out subjects and replacing backgrounds.

The overall process is fairly straightfoward.Create a selection around your subject with the magic wand toolRefine the section to deal with fringing and tricky areas like hairMake a mask from the selectionAdd a solid colour layer underneath your masked out subjectCreate an adjustment layer above the solid colour with a mask to create a vignetteThe magic wand tool is an ideal starting point for cutting out subjects which were photographed on a solid clean background. You can extract subjects from other backgrounds, but it will take a little more work, and the pen tool is generally a wiser choice.An alternative to creating separate solid colour & vignette adjustment layers is to simply use a single gradient adjustment layer. With the mode set to radial, producing a smooth vignette from one colour to a slightly darker version of the same colour is quite trivial. But, keeping it as two separate layers allows you to more easily swap out the colour if needed, without affecting the vignette.