Let me show you how to make a white background in Photoshop.
This will be a comprehensive tutorial
and the technique shown could be applied to people, products or anything else.
In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to remove and replace a background.
I will show you how the Select and Mask workspace works
and how to utilize it better to get the best results.
You will also learn how to keep the original shadow
and apply it to the white background.
And finally, I will show you how to create a light wrap around the main subject
to keep the white background effect more realistic.
And just like all my other Photoshop tutorials,
I will show you many Photoshop tips and tricks,
so make sure that you watch to the very end.
You don't want to miss any of the hidden gems.
Before we start, I want to thank MSI for sponsoring today's Photoshop tutorial.
I'll work with my creator Z16 laptop.
It is a powerful laptop for creative professionals.
Check out the link in the description to learn more about it.
This is the image that we will work with today.
You can download it to follow along if you like.
The link is also in the description.
You can start by unlocking your background,
click on this icon to unlock it.
Then you can create the new white background.
Go into the new Adjustment Layer icon and Select Solid Color.
Choose white from the color picker and press OK.
You can then drag the layer down below the model layer, or if you prefer to work faster,
you can use the keyboard shortcut.
Hold Ctrl on Windows. That's Command on the Mac
and tap on the right or left bracket keys
on the keyboard to move a layer up or down in the layer stack.
This next step is not necessary,
but I do like to stay organized.
So I'll delete the Layer Mask from this background layer
and I'll call it "Background."
When you're renaming a layer, you can press the Tab key on the keyboard
to switch over into the next layer and rename it.
I'll do so and I'll call this layer,
"Woman"
Next, we need to make a selection out of the main subject of the image.
If you're in an older version of Photoshop,
you can use the Quick Selection Tool
and click-and-drag over your main subject to select it.
But in newer versions of Photoshop,
it is much easier to do with the Select Subject command.
Go into the Select menu and choose Subject.
This command will use artificial intelligence, known as Adobe Sensei,
to analyze your image and select the main subject.
The selection is not perfect, but it's a great starting point.
With a selection active,
you can press the Q key on the keyboard to enable the Quick Mask Mode.
The Quick Mask Mode places a red overlay over the areas that are not selected.
This makes the selected areas easier to see.
I'll press the key on the keyboard to enable the Zoom tool.
Then I'll Zoom in and you can see that the A.I. Miss this part of the headphones.
The Quick Mask Mode allows you to edit a selection by painting on it.
You can paint with either black or white to hide or reveal pixels.
Go to the Toolbar and select the Brush Tool
and paint with white to reveal those areas.
And also you'll notice that the A.I. Miss the cord here.
You can reduce the brush size by tapping on the left bracket key on the keyboard
and make it just a bit smaller than the cord.
And I'll show you a trick.
If you click once and hold shift.
And click again,
Photoshop will draw a straight line between those points.
And I'll keep repeating this process and follow the cord to the other side.
Then I'll continue painting with white
over this area to review this piece in your image.
Spend more time fine-tuning the small details,
but I will move on to the next step.
To save time, I'll tap on the Q key once again to reveal my selection,
and I'll go into the Layers panel
and click on the new Layer Mask icon
to create a Layer mask based on the selection.
Before we move on, let's finetune the Layer Mask just a bit.
With the Layer Mask thumbnail selected, you can go into the select
and Mask Workspace button from the Properties panel.
This workspace allows you to fine-tune a Layer mask.
By default, you'll be in the Onion Skinning mode,
but to start, I like to go into the black and white view
so that we can see the image in black and white.
And what this panel allows you to do is refine the edges of the mask
using the sliders here under Global Refinements.
I'll click on the Zoom tool and I'll Zoom in
so that you can see the edges of the mask.
You can see that the edges are a bit jagged,
so you can drag the Smooth slider
over to the right a bit
to smooth out those edges.
And you can increase the contrast to sharpen the edges of the mask.
I think that this looks good in this case.
And I'll press "OK."
As you can see,
Photoshop does a good job on these edges.
But it didn't do that good of a job on her leg.
So again, you can select the Brush tool
and paint with white to reveal
any missing areas, like so.
When masking people,
I like to apply two passes with the select and Mask Workspace.
The edges in a person's body are very different than the hair edges.
With the first pass,
I like to work on the hard edges.
And on the second pass I focus only on the hair.
This technique gives you much better results,
so go back into the select and Mask Workspace
and click on this tool, the Refine Edge Brush Tool.
And just paint over the edges around her hair like so.
So, that Photoshop analyzes those edges
and creates a better selection around her hair.
Alternatively, you could have clicked
on the Refine Hair button to do this with AI.
I just figured that I would get better results by doing it manually.
This is looking good, so I'll press "OK."
Again, you can always select the Brus Tool
and paint with black to hide pixels.
Black is currently my background color,
so I can just tap on the X key to swap my for and background colors.
Once black is your foreground color, you can paint on the Layer mask
to hide areas that shouldn't be showing.
And again, spend more time fine-tuning the mask.
This is where the magic happens.
When you spend more time fine-tuning these smaller details,
but there's no need to spend time doing that in this video.
Next, let's work on the shadow.
If you hold Shift and click on the Layer mask, you will disable it.
And you'll be able to see the shadow on the original image.
You can actually take this shadow and place it up against a white background
to create a more realistic effect.
So that we can use that same shadow.
I will need to duplicate the layer
so you can press CTRL J on Windows
that's Command J on the Mac
and I can name the bottom layer "shadow."
if you like, you can remove the word "copy" from the top layer,
but I don't need to do that.
I'll disable the top layer and we'll work with this bottom layer.
This bottom layer will contain the shadow
to better visualize what we're doing, you can invert the Layer mask so that you
hide the foreground and reveal the background.
To do so, select the Layer Mask thumbnail
and press Ctrl I on Windows
that's Command I on the Mac,
or you can go into the Properties panel and click on the Invert button.
So, now the mask is revealing everything but the model and that's what we want.
On the side, you will notice a water bottle and a jump rope.
You will need to remove these objects.
If you want to use the shadow
on your white background.
To remove these objects,
you can select the Clone Stamp Tool from the toolbar.
Select the Layer thumbnail, not the Layer mask.
Make sure that the focus the white outline is over the Layer thumbnail.
The Clone Stamp tool allows you to paint pixels from one area to another by copying them.
First, you need to set a sample source. The area that Photoshop will use to copy.
You can do so by pressing Alt on Windows, that's Option on the Mac
and clicking over the area that you want to copy.
And just paint away
the jump rope.
You don't need to be perfect.
I will be blurring this layer.
So you can get away with a lot of imperfections.
As you'll see here.
Next, you can be saturate the image by pressing Ctrl Shift U on Windows.
That's Command Shift U on the Mac.
Or you can go into Image,
Adjustments,
Desaturate.
Next, I'm going to blur the layer
so that we can remove the detail from the ground
and just keep the shadow.
To do so, you can go into Filter,
Blur,
Gaussian Blur.
And you can blur it accordingly.
You don't want to blur the image so much
where you lose all details.
But you also don't want to keep the blur so low
where the texture on the ground is still visible.
So you will have to play
around with these settings until you get the result that you want.
In this case, I'm going to go to about 10 pixels and press OK.
I'm still not happy with the texture
that's visible there.
So I will try another blur.
I'm going to go into filter Blur, Motion Blur.
And I can use this blur
to further remove the texture from that shadow,
and I'm going to use an angle that doesn't really distort the shadow too much,
and I'll press OK.
And I'll go back into the regular Gaussian blur one more time.
And try to reduce more of that texture.
In this case, 4 or 5 pixels should work.
I'll press OK one more time.
If it takes you a long time to process these filters, that's probably a sign
that your computer doesn't have the processing power required to run
Photoshop smoothly, so it might be time for an upgrade.
I'm currently using that MSI Creator Z16 laptop.
It's a beautiful yet powerful computer
for creative professionals that I highly recommend.
It has so many incredible features,
but three make the MSI Creator Z16 stand out from the rest.
First, the Creator Z16 comes
with the latest intel 11th Gen Core i9 processor,
giving you the power needed
to satisfy your multitasking and pro level Photoshop tasks.
Second, the Creator Z16 laptops are powered by the GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs,
which allow you to edit up to 8K HDR Raw video and work with large 3D models.
And the third feature that makes the Creator Z 16 laptop stand out from the rest
is the 16 by 10 display.
This 4K display has an aspect ratio
that gives you an extra 10% room than the typical 16 by 9 aspect ratio.
This extra room makes it easier to see
the workspace in Photoshop and other Adobe applications.
If you're looking for a new laptop
that can handle Photoshop well, I recommend the MSI Creator Z16.
It's the laptop that I'm currently using when creating on the go.
To learn more about the Creator Z16, check out the link in the description.
After blurring the details out of the shadows,
you will need to hide all the pixels in the shadow layer.
You can do so by making the layer mask completely black.
Since black is my foreground color,
I can press Alt and Backspace on Windows.
That's Option Delete on the Mac,
which will make the entire layer mask black,
hiding all the pixels in that layer.
I can bring back my Women layer
and with the Brush tool,
I can now paint with white to reveal the shadow.
I'll click on this icon to make
my foreground color white and I'll paint the shadow back in.
My brush is a bit small,
so I'll tap on the right bracket key on the keyboard to increase the brush size.
And also you can go into the brushes presets
and make sure that the Hardness is set to 0,
so that you can paint the soft brush strokes.
What I'll do now is tap on the X key to make my foreground color black.
I'll make a larger brush
by tapping on the right bracket key.
And as I paint with black,
I'll hide the shadow.
And you can just keep fine-tuning it accordingly.
Before we continue, I'll double-click on the Hand tool to fit the image to screen.
The shadow is looking a bit too strong,
but you can use a Levels Adjustment layer to control the intensity.
Let me show you how to do that.
Go into the new Adjustment Layer icon and select Levels.
Then click on this icon in the Properties panel
to clip the Levels Adjustment Layer to the layer below.
This down pointing arrow is indicating
that the Levels Adjustment Layer will only affect the shadow layer
and nothing else.
Then you can click-and-drag on this white point
and drag it to the left to brighten that shadow.
And use this center Gamma point to control the intensity.
Like so.
And just keep adjusting it until you get something that looks good to your eye.
In some cases, it might be a good idea to go back into the woman Layer Mask
and Zoom in really close into your image
and reveal some of the contact shadows on the floor
so that it looks more realistic.
With the Brush tool active, I'm going to make white my foreground color.
I'll decrease my brush size
and I'll just reveal some of the pixels
that are closest to her feet.
Creating those contact shadows
and I can bring back the shoelace
or adjust any other missing detail.
Again, spend more time fine-tuning the smaller details in your image.
I'll double-click on the Hand Tool to fit the image to screen.
Now, let me show you one more important subtle adjustment that you can apply
to make this white background more realistic.
If this were an actual photo,
there will be light bouncing from the white background onto her body.
You can create this effect by creating a "Light Wrap."
An easy way to create a Light Wrap in Photoshop is by using a Layer Style.
With the woman layer selected,
go into the FX icon in the Layers panel
and select Inner Shadow.
And here's something about Photoshop that you need to keep in mind.
Just because a label reads "shadow,"
it doesn't mean that you have to use that control to create a shadow.
You can use it to create a highlight or anything else that you want.
In this case, we're going to use the inner shadow to create an inner glow.
And I know that there's an Inner Glow option in here,
but I actually think that the inner shadow
does a better job of creating the specific glow that we're going for in this case.
You can start by clicking and dragging directly over the image
to position the shadow.
Wherever you want it to be.
In this case, I want it to be on the top
part of her body.
And I'll change the Blending Mode to Screen
and the color to white.
And also increase the size to blur it up a bit.
And you can reduce the highlight's intensity by reducing the Opacity.
Again, click-and-drag to move if need be.
And this is simply creating that effect that there is white light
bouncing from the background on to our model.
Before.
And after.
It's a subtle effect, but I think it brings a lot more realism to the image.
After creating the Light Wrap,
go back into your image and work on the smaller details.
This is what my image looks like after spending just a few minutes cleaning things up.
Keep in mind that your Layer Mask is essential for adding a white background.
If you want the complete guide on removing backgrounds and creating Layer Masks,
then make sure that you check out my in-depth tutorial
on the Select and Mask Workspace.
You can watch it here.
Also, check out the Creators Z16 laptop.
The link is in the description.
Thank you so much for watching!
I'll talk to you in the next tutorial!