How to select a person within Photoshop

futureal33 · 13 Mar 2010

Hiya,

I am sure this has been covered before but I cannot find exactly what I am trying to do, so I am raising a new topic!

Basically... I have a photo of a girl and she has lots of wavy hair all over the place. I want to select her (and her hair!) and then Ctrl Shift + I to inverse the selection... ie to select everything BUT her, and then apply some lens blur to the back ground.

Now... like I said above I have youtubed this to death and googled it etc but I cant find exactly what I need...
Ive tried the lasso tool(s) and none of them are any good
The extract tool isnt any good for what Im doing as this only selects the girl - whereas I want to select the background NOT the girl

How do I go about selecting everything apart from the girl?

Thanks in advance for any help!

JasonRS · 13 Mar 2010

I wrote a blog post about exactly that last week

http://blog.weshootpeople.co.uk/2010/03/02/cutting-hair-masking-it-out/

futureal33 · 13 Mar 2010

Im sorry... but I tried your way and it wont work at all?

When I get to the channels pallete, and im supposed to select one that makes her hair contrast the background the most, I select RED as this is the best one to use, but when I CTRL+Click it (im on a PC) it selects somethings in the photo but not all of her hair!
It also selects some unrelated things?

JasonRS · 13 Mar 2010

Odd, because I use the technique all the time.

There's no magic bullet though. once you've made the selection you then create a mask for the new background and refine that.

Post the pic so we can see what you're working with.

futureal33 · 14 Mar 2010

Ok well there are many, but this is one example...

robinb · 14 Mar 2010

JasonRS said:
I wrote a blog post about exactly that last week

http://blog.weshootpeople.co.uk/2010/03/02/cutting-hair-masking-it-out/

Hi Jason

Trying to follow your guide.

Different picture but trying to do the same.

got as far as :-

"For this image, the blue channel is best.
Now CMD+Click on that channel to load it as a selection, which will now show the marching ants as below"

CS4 - on mac

Nothing happens.

Tried several times,

Not sure what I am doing wrong as following guide step by step.

Any advice please.

thanks

Robin...

JasonRS · 14 Mar 2010

futureal33 said:
Ok well there are many, but this is one example...

because of the varied background, and different hair colours, you're going to have to build the mask in stages, with a combination of techniques.

It's not going to be quick.

You could look at using a tool like Mask Pro, but that's still going to need a lot of work.

cowasaki · 14 Mar 2010

I wrote a tutorial for Talk Photography which is in the tutorials section.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=169940

JasonRS · 14 Mar 2010

robinb said:
Hi Jason

Trying to follow your guide.

Different picture but trying to do the same.

got as far as :-

"For this image, the blue channel is best.
Now CMD+Click on that channel to load it as a selection, which will now show the marching ants as below"

CS4 - on mac

Nothing happens.

Tried several times,

Not sure what I am doing wrong as following guide step by step.

Any advice please.

thanks

Robin...

Not sure what's going wrong, do you seen the marching ants (dotted lines around a the selection) after you cmd+click?

I'm using CS4 as well, so it's not that.

robinb · 15 Mar 2010

Sorry user error. (me)

I did not have cursor/arrow in right place, thought it had to be on image not the button.

Do have couple more questions on this but need to gather my thoughts first so it all makes sense. Thanks

Robin...

JasonRS · 15 Mar 2010

No worries! It's one of those processes that you need to work with a couple of times to get a feel for.

I'll be recording a video of the process later today, so it should be on youtube / vimeo / metacafe etc later tonight.

robinb · 15 Mar 2010

That sounds great.

I have got upto stage above now but have not used dodging/burning tools in PS before so would like to understand that bit.

Also not clear what image is supposed to be in foreground/background for above. (from what I have the background is now in foreground) (though transparent so can see foreground as well)

But hopefully your video will make that clear.

Can you put a link on too it when its uploaded.

many thanks

Robin...

Crazyhorse · 15 Mar 2010

Sorry to hijack this thread.

That's a brilliant tutorial. I took some shots of my daughter and the actual shots of her face are fine, but I didn't light the background and the background is a horrible grey with some stains on the background paper.

Would this method work on that? I have tried to put a white background in but it just looks rubbish and also, I can't do it properly round the hair. (Sorry sounds garbled).

Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks.

Lisa

JasonRS · 15 Mar 2010

Crazyhorse said:
Sorry to hijack this thread.

That's a brilliant tutorial. I took some shots of my daughter and the actual shots of her face are fine, but I didn't light the background and the background is a horrible grey with some stains on the background paper.

Would this method work on that? I have tried to put a white background in but it just looks rubbish and also, I can't do it properly round the hair. (Sorry sounds garbled).

Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks.

Lisa

Yes it would help.

I've used it in the past to replace the background with a solid colour of a different value. You can create the mask on a solid colour layer and this allows you to change the bacground to any value you like.

I also use the select colour tool to fix dirty backgrounds by selecting the background colour, then using that to create a mask on a solid colour layer, the tweaking the mask accordingly.

Crazyhorse · 15 Mar 2010

JasonRS said:
Yes it would help.

I've used it in the past to replace the background with a solid colour of a different value. You can create the mask on a solid colour layer and this allows you to change the bacground to any value you like.

I also use the select colour tool to fix dirty backgrounds by selecting the background colour, then using that to create a mask on a solid colour layer, the tweaking the mask accordingly.

Thank you. To be honest, compared to the example you posted, mine should be a piece of cake really. But I tried different methods over the weekend and they just look rubbish and fake.

Where is the 'select colour tool' in cs4?

Lisa

JasonRS · 15 Mar 2010

It's under

Select / Colour Range

you then use the dropper to select the colour and adjust the fuzziness etc until it's just the colour(s) you want.

JasonRS · 15 Mar 2010

Video's up on YouTube, it's still being processed so if I were you, I'd wait a bit until it's available in HD (uploaded at 1080, so just got to wait!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ymsjgQ-UNk

Hopefully this should make things a bit clearer.

robinb · 15 Mar 2010

Excellent, will look at HD version when there (just showing low res at moment)

thanks

Robin...

JasonRS · 15 Mar 2010

No worries, I'd appreciate some feedback on it too.

BTW, you'll probably notice a few edit jumps as I had to trim out about 90 seconds from some of the dodging and burning to fit into YouTube's 10 minute limit. Nothing key, just the dull repetitive bits

robinb · 16 Mar 2010

Hi Jason

Looks good, just watched it this morning.

Did notice quite a lot of break up in picture I take it that is down to the encoding by youtube ?

Will watch again later today with my picture I am trying to do similar to.

Think I need to spend some time step by step on this as quite a few of the tools I have not used in PS before.

Thanks

JasonRS · 16 Mar 2010

robinb said:
Did notice quite a lot of break up in picture I take it that is down to the encoding by youtube ?

Yes, it's pretty much out of my hands once it's uploaded and they do recode the whole thing for each resolution they post.

robinb · 16 Mar 2010

Need a strong coffee as my head is spinning.

Just watched again.

JasonRS · 16 Mar 2010

I've just had a look at the video on YT, and it's pretty bad, so I'll upload it again later tonight and see if it improves any.

I'll post it to Vimeo at the same time where the quality is usually a bit better.

JasonRS · 16 Mar 2010

Uploaded again to YouTube, hopefully this one will not be as badly compressed (looks OK in SD at the moment)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNzN4u3-ILo

It's also on Vimeo, and already available in HD

http://vimeo.com/10203437

robinb · 16 Mar 2010

Hi Jason

Well done.

I have managed to do it following your instructions.

Had a few false starts along the way.

I must admit to getting confused to all the little icons in PS, also which button along with alt or cmd to press.

The other problem I had was the my negative of foreground was inverted first time round so everything was back to front picture wise from what you were saying so it all went horribly wrong.

I will have to keep practising this one.

And the newer upload is a lot better.

Robin...

JasonRS · 16 Mar 2010

robinb said:
The other problem I had was the my negative of foreground was inverted first time round so everything was back to front picture wise from what you were saying so it all went horribly wrong.

Ah, yes I mention how to fix that in the written blog (select the mask and hit CMD+I to invert) but missed it out of the video :bonk:

How to select a person within Photoshop

TPer Emeritus