In this video, I'm going to show you how to remove backgrounds in Photoshop.
This tutorial is meant for beginners.
That means that I'm going to go slow and deliver all the information
in digestible chunks so that you can follow along.
Also, if you want to try out these techniques using the same photo
that I'm going to use, look at the description below,
you'll find a link to my website where you can download the photo.
Also, if you see anything in this video
that you enjoy or that teaches you something,
make sure that you click on that like button and subscribe
to the Photoshop Training Channel.
Let's jump right into the tutorial.
This is the image that we're going to work with.
It's of a woman running through a bridge
and what we're going to do is remove the background.
Now, there are a lot of ways of removing backgrounds in Photoshop.
What I'm going to do here is show you
a technique that should work in most cases.
And when it doesn't, all you need to do is continue
fine-tuning the image a little bit further and the image should work.
But keep in mind that there's a lot
of ways of removing backgrounds in Photoshop.
I'm just showing you a technique that
I think will work in most cases,
and it's actually very simple.
Let me show you how that works.
The first step, obviously, is to open up the image.
Once your image is open in Photoshop
All you need to do is go into Select
and Select and Mask.
This is a dedicated workspace
that helps you make precise selections and masks.
On the left-hand side, you'll see a Toolbar.
Which is a limited set of tools
also found in the regular Photoshop interface.
The tools here allow you to either
make a selection or edit a selection,
as well as zoom and pan around the image
above that, you'll see the Options bar,
which gives you more settings for the currently selected tool.
And to the right, you'll see the adjustable properties.
These controls can help you further fine-tune your mask or selection.
By default, you will be in the Onionskin mode
and the transparency will be set to 50 percent.
That transparency simply allows you to see
the pixels that you have selected
up against the original image.
In this case, we don't have anything selected.
So, the original image is viewed at 50 percent opacity.
So, once we start selecting something,
you'll see that the selected pixels will be shown at 100 percent opacity.
There are a lot of ways of making selections in a Select Mask workspace.
If you want to select something specific, like an article of clothing,
then you can start your selection with the Quick Selection Tool.
You can enable it from the Toolbar.
Then you can click-and-drag over the image and Photoshop will
automatically find the edges of the areas that you click-and-drag over.
You could also use the Subtract option
by clicking on this icon.
Or even better, holding Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac and clicking-and-dragging
to deselect from the areas that you didn't intend to select.
That's one way of starting your selection in your image.
If you're working in newer versions of Photoshop
like Photoshop 2021 like I am now,
then you can use artificial intelligence
known as Adobe Sensei to make your selections.
One way of making that selection is by
simply clicking on the Select Subject button
right up here.
When you click on that,
Photoshop will first ask me
if I want to remove the selection I already created.
I do.
I want to disregard that selection
and Photoshop and simply analyze the image and select the main subject.
Photoshop does a fantastic job.
It only took one click.
The selection is not perfect,
but you can always fine-tune it to get the results that you want.
Also, as a side note,
I want to show you a tool that will allow you to do this in an image
that has two subjects, but you only want to keep one.
So, I'm going to quickly switch over to a different image,
show you how that works, and then we'll come back to this image.
In this image, we have two women jumping.
So, if I simply click on Select Subject, Photoshop will select both women.
But what if you only wanted to select one person?
Well, what you can do instead is enable the Object Selection tool
and make sure that you have the Lasso mode active
and you can simply click-and-drag a very loose selection
around the person that you want to keep.
And Photoshop's A.I. will analyze the image
and make a selection out of the main subject
in the area that you defined with the Object Selection Tool.
So, if you have an image with one or more subjects,
then use the Object Selection Tool to select your main subject with A.I.
And if your image only has one subject,
then simply click on the Select Subject button.
But anyway, back to our original image.
Again, I created the selection
by clicking on the Select Subject button
to automatically generate my selection.
These automatically generated selections are not perfect.
They do require some fine-tuning.
So, let's work on that next.
I'm going to select the Zoom Tool
and I'll Zoom into her shoe.
And you'll see that Photoshop's A.I.
missed a couple of areas.
And you want to bring these areas back by adding to the selection.
And there are a few ways of doing that.
First of all, you can use the Quick Selection Tool,
make sure that the Add option is enabled,
and you can click-and-drag
for Photoshop to analyze the areas that you paint over
and bring those pixels back.
You could also enabled a Brush Tool,
and you can add by clicking on this icon
and simply paint in any missing details.
Like the shoelace here.
See, that?
See how I'm painting the shoelace back in?
And you can use the Spacebar to pan
and look for other areas that you can adjust.
And spend your time fine-tuning your image.
Obviously, in this example, I'm not going to spend a lot of time fine-tuning these small details.
But make sure that you do spend the time in your projects
because it will make a big difference.
What I'm going to do now is fix the mask edge.
And I'll double-click on the Hand Tool to fit the image to screen.
So that we can see the entire image.
So what do I mean by mask edge?
This in reality will become aLayer Mask,
a nondestructive way of hiding pixels.
So, I want to adjust the edges of the mask
so that they don't look jagged or blurry
or have any imperfections.
So, that the cutout looks realistic.
In this panel, we have the Global Refinements sliders,
that you can see here.
Smooth.
Feather.
Contrast.
And shift edge.
These sliders will control the edges of your mask.
And I know that if you're starting out,
you might not know what that means.
So, I'll zoom in
to her legs here
and I can scroll up.
And under View, I'll select black and white.
So this is what my mask will look like.
With a mask, white reveals and Black conceals.
Her silhouette is white because we're going to keep her.
And what I want to do is remove all the jaggedness in this mask
so that we have a better cut out.
First of all,
I like to increase the smooth slider
so that we can smooth out besieges, see how much smoother the edges look now.
And all we had to do is simply use the Smooth slider.
Then I like to increase the Contrast to make these edges sharper.
In some cases, you may need to Feather your edges.
Feathering means blurring.
So, when I drag this over to the right,
you'll see how the edges are now blurry.
I don't want to do that in this case, so I'll leave that to zero.
Next, I can shift the edge in or out.
The reason that you may want to do that
is that a lot of times when you create a selection,
you might see some halos around the edges of your mask
and shifting the edge in will help you prevent that.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
I'm going to go back up and under View.
I'm going to select On Black
so that I can see my selection up against a black background.
And that will make the white edges or halos stand out.
And notice how there are a few edge halos here on these edges.
This is also known as fringing.
And what I'm going to do is simply shift the edge in by dragging to the left.
And you can see that Photoshop will reduce those edge halos.
If some of these imperfections are too extreme,
it's much easier to simply paint them away.
So, you can select the Brush Tool.
Click on the Minus button
and then just paint away these imperfections as best as you can.
And again, in your project, spend a little more time than I am
fine-tuning these small details.
I'll double-click on the Hand Tool to fit the image to screen.
And you might notice that we haven't touched her hair at all.
And that's on purpose.
I like to do two steps when making selections.
The first step is usually for selecting the entire body
and then the second step is for the hair.
In my opinion, you get better results
if you separate the two selections.
So, let me show you how to continue on and do the second adjustment.
I'm going to click-and-drag down
and under Output, I'm going to output as a Layer Mask
and I'll press OK.
And Photoshop will remove the background using a Layer Mask.
A Layer Mask is a non-destructive way of hiding pixels.
In other words, you can always come back and bring back pixels that you hid.
Also, the Selected Mask Workspace
can edit a Layer Mask.
So what are you going to do now is
go back into the Select and Mask workspace
and work with the model's hair.
To do so, make sure that the Layer Mask is active.
You can tell that it's active when you
see the white outline, the focus, over the Layer Mask thumbnail.
Then from the Properties panel, click on Select the Mask.
And what I'm going to do now is use this brush here.
The Refine Edge Brush.
And notice that when I paint with this brush,
Photoshop will analyze the pixels around her hair
and it will make a better job selecting them.
And the reason that I'm making all these adjustments
on a separate step and not on the original adjustment
is so that the global refinement adjustments do not affect the hair.
The smoothing, the contrast, and the Shift Edge
were all intended for the edges around her body,
and the edges around her hair is very different.
So, you usually will not get good results
if you use the same technique for both.
So, I like to separate them.
So, now I can just focus on the hair.
And all you need to do is simply just
continue painting and Photoshop will analyze the image
and remove the background.
Also, in Photoshop 2021 and newer,
you can use the Refine Hair button
to use artificial intelligence
to locate the hair
and basically apply the same adjustment
as the Refine Edge Brush Tool.
In this case, it didn't do that good of a job on her face.
So, I'm not happy with this result.
So, I'll undo that and simply
apply this effect manually
and not with the A.I..
Also, select the Brush Tool.
And enable the add feature.
And add to the selection areas that
need a little work like here,
we lost a little bit of those highlights that I think we needed.
And now that everything is looking great,
I'm going to output to a Layer Mask.
I'll press OK.
And Photoshop applies the mask adjustments to our previous mask.
Next, I'm going to go into the new Adjustment Layer icon
and select Solid Color
and I'm going to make a background for this image.
The color is not important.
So I'll just make it pink and press OK.
And I can drag this layer below the runner layer
so that we can see what the background looks like.
At this point,
you may find some imperfections in your mask and that's okay.
You can always paint with the Brush Tool
and add or subtract to your mask.
By painting with white to add
and black to subtract.
Let me show you how that works.
I'm going to select the Zoom Tool
and I'm going to zoom into her other shoe.
And you might notice that we have a few imperfections.
If the imperfections are difficult to see,
you can sort of create an Onionskinning mode here.
Let me show you how to do that.
You can select your Layer Mask
and from the Properties panel, you can reduce the Density slider.
And that will reveal some of the original background.
See that?
So, now you can see that we're missing a lot of her shoe.
So, we can paint that back in on the Layer Mask.
Using the Brush Tool.
With the Brush Tool, you can paint with white or black on this mask
to reveal or hide pixels.
White reveals.
The foreground color is white,
so, when we paint we'll reveal those pixels.
With black, we can hide pixels.
Also, a really useful shortcut for this is the X key on the keyboard,
which swaps between the foreground and background color.
So, you can paint with white
and then if you make a mistake,
you can quickly tap on the X key to swap to black as the foreground color
and then you can paint those away.
At this point, spend some time doing the final adjustments to your mask
and you should have a great cut out when you're done.
Obviously, I'm not going to spend a lot of time
in this video making these small adjustments,
but make sure that you do spend the time in your project.
When you're done
just bring the density slider back up to 100%.
Also, I want to point out that there is a feature
that allows you to make mask really quickly that I didn't talk about,
but I want to point it out.
To show you how it works I need to delete my Layer Mask.
So, I'll right-click on it
and I'll select
Delete Layer Mask.
And you can see here, in the Properties Panel
that when you have a layer selected,
there will be a Remove Background button.
When you click on that, Photoshop will use
the same artificial intelligence inside the Select and Mask Workspace
to analyze your image,
make a selection,
and create a Layer Mask all in one go.
And the reason that I didn't use this to start
is because after doing this, I still need to make those adjustments
that I made to my mask
using the same artificial intelligence.
So, I still need to select my mask
and go into Select and Mask to make my adjustments
so, you can use either method.
But since this video is for beginners,
I wanted to keep it all in one workspace so that it was easier to understand.
But you do have this option if you need it.
I'm going to undo this and bring back my mask that I have been editing in.
The last thing that I'll show you
is how to bring a photo as a layer to replace the background.
To do so, you can go into File,
and select Place Embedded.
I have this new background here.
I'm going to place it over my image
and I will click the check mark to commit the changes.
And there she is in a new background.
For those of you that are a little more advanced, you'll know that' there are a few
things missing, like shadows highlights color matching.
If you're new and you want to learn how to do that,
then check out this video!
I talk all about placing a foreground element
into a completely different background.
And I'll show you how to tackle all those extra things that you need to do
to make a composite look realistic.
And if you want to learn more about masking,
then check out this tutorial
where I talk all about the Minimum and Maximum Filter.
They are great tools to use when you're masking
and they will help you a lot!
So, make sure that you check either of these tutorials out.
Thank you so much for watching!
Again, my name is Jesus Ramirez.
If you found anything in this video useful,
make sure that you click on the Like button
and let me in on the comments down below what that was.
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Thank you so much for watching.
I'll talk to you again in the next video.