- Okay, so if you've followed my videos for a while now
you'll know that I have a bit of a thing
for selections and cutouts.
So, in this video I want to show you another little trick
for making your selections look so much better.
Plus, I've got a secret tip to share with you.
(typing)
Now, I'm going to show you this technique
on this deer picture and this is a picture
that I've used in a recent video where I went through
how you can use a brush to fake a cut out.
If you've not seen it, you can click on the banner
appearing at the top of the screen to watch it
now or just wait until the end of the video
and I'll add a thumbnail that you can just simply click on.
So, what exactly is this technique?
Well, on-screen you can see that I've got an active
selection that I've made of this deer.
All I've done at this stage is just used
the quick selection tool.
So, when I zoom in you can see that there is
definitely a little more that I need to do
where I need to pick up all these extra fine hairs
that the quick selection tool isn't able to do.
Now, I'm currently using the current version of Photoshop.
This is now January 2017 and you can see from the top
of the screen here that I'm using
Adobe Photoshop cc: 2017.
And what we have available to us with this version
is what's called Select and Mask.
This is from a recent update where Adobe have updated
Refine Edge and given us this Select and Mask.
You can see in the options by the top of the screen,
when I click on that we get a much bigger
dialogue box with much more sliders and a few little
different options over on the left hand side as well.
Now, I've got to be honest with you and just between
me and you, I'm not really a big fan of
using Select and Mask and I do know a few friends as well
that are of the same opinion.
I loved Refine Edge.
I thought that just did an absolute treat
when it came to picking up all those fine hairs
when making selections.
However, all is not lost if you've got the update.
You're not just stuck with Select and Mask.
Let me just cancel and come out of here.
Now, this is something that a friend of mine Colin Smith,
who runs Photoshop Cafe--
I'll put up details of him and links to his store
in the description part of this video--
But Colin revealed a little trick that you can do
to bring back Refine Edge.
The way we're gonna do this is, we're gonna go to the
select menu at the top of the screen and then we can see
here we've got the option to go into Select and Mask
but rather than just clicking on it, hold down your
shift key and then click on it.
And then what you're gonna get is Refine Edge.
Good old Refine Edge is back.
So now, we can carry on using what we're used to using.
And, if we're honest, what did a pretty good job anyway.
So, huge thanks to Colin for that one.
All is not lost. We still have Refine Edge.
So, now that we're in Refine Edge, what I'm gonna do
is just use the edge detection tool, which is on by default,
just to pick up some of the extra hairs that we couldn't get
with the first pass when we used the quick selection tool
to make the selection of the deer.
Now, I would ordinarily go all the way around the deer
to pick up all the hairs.
But, just for speed and just to show you
this tech nice and quickly, we'll stick to this
one area of the deer.
Just on the main hair.
And this is where there's a majority of
all those fine hairs.
And you can see just with one simple pass there,
it seems like it's doing a really good job.
So, what I'll now do is send this image out of Refine Edge
and back into Photoshop so I could then carry on
with my compositing.
So, to do that I'm gonna go to the output menu
at the bottom of the Refine Edge properties here
and where it says selection, I'm gonna choose
new layer with layer mask and then click okay.
And that will then send it back over into Photoshop.
Now, at this stage it's pretty difficult to see exactly
what we're working with here because of this transparent
layer, this transparent checkerboard here.
So, what I'm gonna do is just add a colour below it
just so it makes things much clearer.
To do that, I'm gonna go to the layer menu,
choose new fill layer and solid colour.
I'll give it a name. Something like sky.
We'll click okay. We're gonna get the colour picker.
I'm just gonna use a very de-saturated lightish
kind of blue colour. That will be fine.
Click okay.
I'm just gonna drag it then below the deer.
Now, you don't need to do that.
I'm purely doing it so that you can see nice and clearly
what we've got here to work with.
So when I zoom in you can see what initially
looked like a really good selection - I'm picking
up all these fine hairs - it isn't quite as good
as what we first thought and sure, yeah,
it's done a pretty good job.
It's managed to pick up some of those hairs,
but it actually starts to look a little bit crispy.
The hair that's picked up is a lot lighter.
I think Refine Edge has struggled with it
just a little bit because the contrast was very, very low
maybe in this particular area and it
definitely needs some kind of improvement.
We've got what we call fringing.
So, here's how we can get rid of it.
Well, in fact the video at the end of this,
the little thumbnail at the end of this video,
if you click on that, I've got one technique you can use
using brushes to maybe fake the look of making
this look better than it is.
But here's another way using the clone stamp tool.
And this is really useful when you have this
particular fringing where you can see some of the hairs
there, but they're really, really light in colour.
Now, to do this what we first of all need to do
is click on the layer that contains our cut out.
Then I'm gonna add a new blank layer to the top
of the layer stack.
I'm gonna call this one hair.
So that's the first thing we need to do.
Then I'm gonna go to the toolbar and choose the
Clone Stamp Tool, or just press S on the keyboard,
which is a keyboard shortcut.
Now, when we use a tool in Photoshop, each tool
has it's own set of options that we can actually alter
to change how the actual tool behaves.
And the clone stamp tool, here we can see
the options at the top.
There's a couple of changes we need to make.
The first one is where it says sample and I've got
mine set to current and below.
The reason for that is that I want to use a
blank layer to do my cloning on so that it's nondestructive.
If I try to clone on a blank layer, well
there's nothing that I can sample to clone from.
So, I need to tell Photoshop to look below this layer
to where you will find pixels.
So, by me using current and below,
that's what Photoshop will do.
So, it looks through the hair layer.
It sees the deer layer below it and it can then
use the clone stamp tool absolutely fine.
So, that's what we need to do there.
The next thing we need to do is where it says mode.
Now, ordinarily that's gonna be set to normal.
Now, we're gonna change it to darken.
And I'll explain why in just a moment.
So, we changed the mode to darken, set the sample there
to current and below.
The final thing that we need to do.
With this hair layer, we're gonna create
what's called a clipping mask.
The clipping mask basically means, that whatever appears
on this hair layer is only visible on the visible
parts of the layer below.
Now, we're gonna be cloning to make this hair,
this fringing hair, look better.
So we only want the cloning to appear on the hair.
So, by me adding a clipping mask, it's only gonna
be visible on that hair, as opposed to
appearing all over the background.
And I'll kind of explain that a little bit more
as we go through this.
But to add a clipping mask, all I need to do is
put my cursor in between the hair layer
and this deer copy layer
then hold down my option key on Mac or alt key on PC
and then click.
And you'll see that the little thumbnail icon here
moves up to the right hand side and we get this little
downward facing arrow which is telling us
that this layer is now a clipping mask.
So, now that we've got that set up, let's come
over to the deer itself.
I'm using my clone stamp tool and I'm gonna sample
some of the hair on the deer's main hair.
Not the fringing. Just a little bit further in.
To sample it, I hold down my option key or alt key
depending if I'm working on Mac or PC.
And then, we click to sample it into Photoshop's
memory, like so.
And then all I'm going to do is brush over the hair
on the actual mane, it's got this fringing.
Now, you'll notice that it's actually
starting to darken it down.
Now, because we used this darken blend mode,
all that's happening here is the area that I sampled
is quite dark.
So, when I bring my clone stamp tool over the fringing,
Photoshop will only add the cloning onto the areas
that are lighter than where I initially cloned.
So, it's not just gonna clone over everything.
It's only gonna clone over the light parts of the fringing.
So, it's a really great way of controlling
where that cloning appears.
And you can see I'm only doing a very, very quick
pass here, but if I turn that layer on and off
you can see the difference that it's making already.
It's worth bearing in mind that you're never
gonna get a perfect selection.
But what we can do in Photoshop is use the tools
available to us to make the selections
look as good as possible.
And in the case of that brush technique
that you can catch at the end of this video,
we can also fake cutouts so that they
look better than they really are.
Now let's just zoom out just a touch.
And you can see now, we go from before
with that really light fringing to there,
where we have much, much hair visible so it's
actually improving the look of the actual mane
and all the hair that we've picked up just there as well.
So, I would probably do that going all
the way around the deer, especially on the tail
where we picked up some of that fringing.
And hopefully, then we've managed to get
another great looking putout.
And this is just another tool that you can add
into your Photoshop toolbox.
So, that's pretty much it.
Make sure that you click on the little thumbnail
at the end of the video here to watch that extra one
if you haven't seen it already.
But there you go. That's all from me.
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But for now, that's all from me.
I'll catch you next time.