Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you how to use
the Select and Mask Tool in Photoshop to cut out hair on an image.
Now it really does matter if you have a really busy background.
So before you even start, try to find an image that has just a solid background and a lot
of contrast.
That's really important - a lot of contrast between the hair and the background.
So once you find a good image to start with, you're good to go.
So the first thing we want to do is to find an image to work with.
And I'm just going to go to pexels.com and search for 'yoga.'
And here's a good image, and I'll just download this.
And I also put the link for this in my description.
I actually already have it downloaded, so I'm just going to go ahead and open it up
in Photoshop.
I'm going to hit Z on my keyboard to get my Zoom Tool, and we'll just kind of zoom in
to her.
I'll use my spacebar to pull it down a little bit, maybe CMD minus to zoom out just a tiny
bit.
I'm just going to completely isolate her entire body.
And if you have a lot of contrast between the background and her, it makes it really
easy to cut her out using the Quick Selection Tool.
So I'm going to zoom in a little bit.
We'll use the Quick Selection Tool and get most of her.
Now up here at the top are some options.
So we want the one with the plus (+) so that we can just keep adding to the selection,
and Auto-Enhance can be turned on, but just know it's going to slow your computer down
a little bit.
It does make for a more accurate selection, so that's a good thing.
I'm going to increase the size of my brush a little by holding CTRL and OPT and then
dragging to the right.
This is on a Mac.
For a PC, I believe it would be CTRL and ALT.
Now to get the bigger areas, you want to have a bigger brush.
You want the brush to be about the size of what you're tracing, maybe a little smaller.
So this is kind of a narrow area.
So I'm going to hit CTRL and OPT or CTRL and ALT on a PC, and drag it to the left a little
bit to reduce the size of my brush.
I'll just click and drag and, as you can see, this tool really works
well.
We've got a few places where we're going to have to do some fine tuning, but for the most
part, it's getting the edges fairly nicely.
I'm going to zoom in on her hair.
A good way to select hair at this stage is to just try to get most of it.
I would leave out the really tiny wisps like up in here, but I would get maybe some of
this.
I would get these strands down here.
So I'm going to get back on my W Tool, which is the Quick Selection Tool, and I'm going
to hit CTRL and OPT to reduce the size of this brush.
So, since I have a much smaller brush, when I select these things, it doesn't get everything.
I'm going to try to get a little more right here.
And then I think these parts of the hair are pretty important.
I'm going to get a really small brush and we'll zoom in, and we'll just trace these
lines.
It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, but you do want it close.
I'm going to make my brush just a little bit smaller and get this one right here.
We can also hold OPT and delete areas that we don't want.
I'm going to hit CMD zero to get all the way back out.
And I'll zoom in on the arm section here, get back on my Quick Selection Tool, make
my brush a little bit bigger, and then hold OPT or ALT on a PC to deselect these parts
in here.
I usually use a Wacom tablet.
Right now I'm using the Trackpad on my Mac, and it doesn't do a great job...I'm just not
used to it.
So that's why it is not a great selection.
Now that you have your selection, you can hit the letter Q on your keyboard, and it
will turn your selection...everything that you have...to red, and it's the same as hitting
Quick Mask right here.
And then you can paint with black or white to remove or add parts to your selection.
So I'm going to zoom into the hair down here.
I'm going to hit B for the Brush Tool, and then I'm going to make that a bit smaller,
and we will just paint with white, which removes the red
and removes the selection.
And you definitely don't have to do this perfectly.
I just kind of wanted to show you a different technique for selecting things.
So once you're done and you're happy with how it looks, hit Q again on your keyboard,
and it'll turn it back into the selection.
I'm going to CMD minus and zoom out.
And although there's some major problems down here by her hands, I'm going to skip that
and we'll focus on just the hair right now.
We'll come down here on the Layers palette and add a mask.
So you can see there's a lot of blue that we didn't get and some pieces that are cut
off.
And that's just fine.
So let's go to Properties.
If you can't see this, you can go to Window and then >Properties.
And then we'll go to 'Select and Mask'.
Now the first thing I do when I get in here is I change my View Mode to 'On Black'.
And that way we can really see our problem areas.
The things over here on the right are going to affect the entire masked area, and the
things over here on the left kind of just affect one little piece of the entire mask.
So if you open up 'Global Refinements,' you can see four different options.
The two that I use the most here are 'Smooth'...you can smooth everything out just a little bit,
and then also 'Shift the Edge'.
If you move this to a negative number, you can see the blue disappear.
But you're also going to cut into your image a little bit, so you have to keep that in
mind.
For now, let's just put these back to zero or around there.
I don't mind it being a little brought in.
OK, so let's take a look at these tools over here, one of them in particular, which is
the Refine Edge Brush Tool.
So we'll click on that.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit, get back on my Refine Edge Brush Tool, and just click
and drag along the edges where you see blue.
And now it's removing that background that was so hard to get earlier.
I'm just clicking in the blue areas and just dragging a little bit.
If you want to get in to really refine it, go ahead and make your brush size quite a
bit smaller.
And I generally like to keep my hardness very low, like zero, to kind of give it a smooth
edge.
I'm going to come up here to the top part over here, grab my Refine Edge Brush Tool,
make it a little bit bigger, and just move across that outer outline.
And now you're still going to get some of that reflection of the blue through her hair
and that kind of thing, or whatever's in her background is probably going to reflect on
her skin and in her hair.
So at this point, we want to open 'Output Settings', which is just below, and we'll
click on 'Decontaminate Colors'.
And that gets rid of all that blue.
Obviously, we could still take some time to remove this blue, but it got rid of the blue
in her hair.
And then we'll say 'OK'.
And now you can see all the little flyaways in her hair.
So all we'd have to do now is just add another background.
I'll create a new layer.
And I'll click it and drag it underneath this current layer.
And let's make it a lot different.
I think I'll make it kind of a yellowish, maybe light yellow color.
And then I'll hit OPT Delete, which will fill the foreground with that color.
Now let's take a look at her hair.
It's cut out pretty nicely, especially if she's going to be used in, say, a magazine
ad or something like that.
She probably won't be this zoomed in, and it won't be nearly as noticeable that, you
know, this isn't perfect.
From even this distance, it looks pretty good.
So this is the best way that I know of to cut out hair.
But if you have a better way of doing it, please leave a comment in the comment section.
All right, that's my video for this week.
If you liked it, please click on the 'Like' button.
And I'll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial.
Thank you!!!