• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

STEP ONE:

Open the photo of Justin. Since it’s a RAW file, it’ll open directly in Adobe Camera Raw. You’ll notice the background is a dark gray and, in Chapter 1, I talked about the best background to select people from. Well, dark gray isn’t it. I prefer a light gray instead, especially if the subject is wearing darker clothes, like Justin is. That said, we don’t always have a choice. Sometimes we have to work with what we’ve got, so we’ll cheat a little in the next step.

STEP TWO:

Increase the Exposure setting to +2.50. This overexposes the entire photo, but it brings the background to a lighter gray, which will work well for our selection. Don’t worry, we’ll come back and adjust it when we’re done with the selection.

STEP THREE:

Press-and-hold the Shift key and you’ll see the Open Image button turn into the Open Object button at the bottom right of the Camera Raw window (circled here). Click that button to open the photo in Photoshop as a Smart Object. By working with the photo this way, we have the ability to go back and forth between Photoshop and Camera Raw if we ever want to adjust the photo later. It gives us a lot of flexibility, especially when we’re working on composites, because sometimes we need to change things as the entire composite begins to come together.

STEP FOUR:

Now that we’re in Photoshop, press W to select the Quick Selection tool from the Toolbox, and then use the tool to paint a selection around Justin. Photoshop will select the overall figure pretty fast. Keep in mind, though, it’s worth spending an extra couple of minutes here to zoom in and use a small brush to make sure you get all of the tiny edges that the larger brush will miss the first time around. Just paint again to add to the selection, or press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key to remove part of the selection.

STEP FIVE:

Once you get your selection looking good, click the Refine Edge button up in the Options Bar. Press the F key to toggle the View setting until the background turns white. This’ll be a good color to really see the edges of our selection. Turn on the Smart Radius checkbox and set the Radius to 20 px. Set the Smooth setting to 3, the Feather to 0.3 px, and the Output To pop-up menu to Layer Mask, and click OK.

STEP SIX:

Now, you’ll see that Justin has been masked out and put on a transparent background. Press Command-+ (PC: Ctrl-+) to zoom in on his shoulder on the left side of the photo. If you look around the edges of your selection, you may see some rough fringes or missed edges, like I have here. This happens a lot when the person in your photo is wearing something that matches the background too much.

STEP SEVEN:

Back in Chapter 1, we saw a quick way to fix this without having to tediously perfect the mask edge to make it perfect. First, press B to get the Brush tool and choose a smaller, soft-edged brush. Then, in the Options Bar, change the blend Mode of the brush to Overlay.

STEP EIGHT:

If it’s not targeted already, click on the layer mask to target it. In this case, part of the shirt is missing, so press D to set your Foreground color to white, and then paint along the edge where the shirt is missing (no need to be precise here, it’s okay if the brush extends beyond the edge). Photoshop starts revealing the missing edges of the shirt, but won’t bring the background back in. That’s because the Overlay blend mode is simply fixing the edge of the mask. Even though your brush may be larger and it looks like you’d bring the background back into view, it doesn’t.

STEP NINE:

Continue the same process around the edges of the selection, until you clean everything up. Also, don’t forget, if you see too much of the background in any areas, the opposite also works. In this case, the area near his shoes had some background showing through. Press X to change your Foreground color to black and paint on the mask. Since you’re still in the Overlay blend mode for the brush, it’ll bring