Firstly, if there's a color contrast
in the image, like with these flowers,
it's very easy and quick to cut out
because the background color's different.
You can go to Select, then Color Range,
and pick the background color.
As you can see, there's pixels been selected
that we don't want, so increase the Fuzziness slider
until they go.
You don't want it to be so fuzzy
that it starts to select the color
from what you want to keep,
but it needs to be fuzzy enough
so the background gets selected fully.
When you're happy, press OK.
The background will now be selected.
Right click on it and choose Select Inverse.
This selects what you want to keep
and ignores the background.
Press CTRL+C to copy, and then CTRL+V to paste.
You'll now have a new transparent layer
with just the cut out image that you want.
That's the easiest and quickest way to do it,
but your image might be more complicated.
For example, this one looks to have really good contrast,
but actually, if you look at certain parts of the dog,
like here on the face, as well as the ears and body,
you can see that the light bits are very similar
to the background.
That means that if I try to use Color Range
to select the background,
I'll end it with parts of the dog being selected,
as you can see from this preview,
I could just lower the Fuzziness
so that the dog isn't included,
but then you end it with all these fragments
of the background, and when you look closer,
the dog isn't actually very well cut out anyway.
That's because despite looking solid,
the background is actually made up
of several different shades of the same color.
You can see this when I select parts of it
with the Magic Wand tool.
These aren't visible to the naked eye,
but Photoshop picks up the color difference.
The quickest way to cut out an image like this
is by increasing the tolerance of the Magic Wand,
so it selects a wider area.
A tolerance of about 50 results in too much of the dog
being selected in this case,
whereas 10 results in too little background being selected.
This will need to be adjusted, based on the image
that you're using.
For this one, about 20 seems good.
It's got all the background selected
and just a few light areas of the dog on the ear
and the collar, which we can fix up easily afterwards.
We can do that by selecting the Lasso tool.
You can see from the icon that it's just a normal lasso
at the moment, but if you hold down SHIFT,
it changes to a plus sign, and if you hold down ALT,
it changes to a minus sign.
We want to remove some of the selection of the dog,
so we only have the background, so hold down ALT
and just drag around the areas that have been selected
but need to go.
The Lasso tool will remove the selection
of what you want to keep, leaving only the background.
Once you've done that, you can right click,
Select Inverse again,
and the parts you want to keep will be selected.
Again, CTRL+C and CTRL+V
to paste the dog onto a new Layer,
and you can see that it's very well cut out as well.
Good boi.
Finally, if you've got an image like this
with a lot of similar colors,
you'll want to cut out the desired part manually.
That's because the colors are too similar
to use the Color Range or the Magic Wand
without getting messed up.
Since it's going to need precision, you can zoom in and out
by holding down ALT on your keyboard,
while scrolling up and down with your mouse.
Alternatively, you can use the magnifying glass here,
which takes a bit longer, but does the same thing.
There's the option of using the Lasso tool from before
to cut out an object, but you'll need a very steady hand
to go around the whole thing without mistakes.
You might prefer to use the magnet version,
which you can access by right clicking on the Lasso tool,
then choosing Magnetic Lasso.
Click to set a start point
and then slowly move around the image
that you want to cut out.
It automatically identifies the image that you want
as you move round.
You can change the frequency that it plots the points
on a scale of one to 100, 100 meaning
it's constantly putting points down like this.
When you lower the number, the points become less frequent.
I actually prefer it to plot points less frequently
because it gives you more control over the image.
You can manually add points where necessary
by clicking down.
Magnetic Lasso will do a great job if the image is in focus
and there's a clear contrast,
like on the right-hand side of the strawberry,
but can struggle on the left-hand side,
where things aren't so clear.
In this case, you might want to use the Pen tool instead.
It's slower, but allows you to be more accurate
because you've got full control.
You click to set a line between two points,
then you can hover your mouse in between the points
and you see the icon change to have the plus symbol.
Click again and it'll place another point in the middle,
which is moveable.
Hold CTRL down
and you'll be able to move the point up and down,
as well as arching it from side to side.
You can use this feature to pull the line around the shape,
so you end up with a really smooth curve all the way around.
It's just a case of going around the shape steadily
until you're finished.
When you're done, click the original point
to complete the shape, then right click in the middle
and choose Make Selection to select the shape
that you've just made.
Press OK on this dialog box and then CTRL+C
and CTRL+V to copy and paste it into a new Layer.
So in summary, if there's a clear contrast, use Color Range,
because it's the quickest way to cut something out.
If it's not so clear,
the quickest method is using the Magic Wand,
combined with the Lasso to tidy things up,
and if there's way too many contrasting colors,
you should use the Magnetic Lasso
or Pen tool for more accuracy.
If you don't have Photoshop, you can use Photopea,
which is free and web-based.
As you can see, it's got all the same tools
that I've mentioned in Photoshop.
If you're interested in using these design skills
to make passive income online,
check out my other videos to learn how.
Thanks.