To create a smooth, seamless backdrop in Photoshop,
you can either remove the distracting element
or you can create a new backdrop from scratch.
My name is Jesus Ramirez, and in this video you're going to learn both methods.
Let's start by removing distracting objects.
This light stand on the left is very
distracting, so it's best for us to remove it.
Start by enabling the Lasso Tool.
From the toolbar or press the L key on the keyboard.
The Lasso Tool allows you to freehand
the selection. Simply trace around the light stand.
You can create a loose selection.
You don't have to be precise, but make sure you get the entire left side.
If need be, add or subtract from your selection.
In this case, we need to add the cable to the selection.
To add to the selection,
press and hold the Shift key and drag around the object you would like to add.
Again, you don't have to be precise,
a loose selection should work just fine.
Once you have the light stand
and the cable selected, you can go into Edit and choose Content-Aware Fill.
From the Content-Aware Fill workspace, you can seamlessly fill the selected
portions of your image with content sampled from other parts of the image.
The window on the left shows you
the result, and the window on the right shows you the sampled areas in green.
Since the background is fairly simple, the Content-Aware Fill worked great.
It magically removed the lights and cable,
we didn't even have to adjust any of the controls on the right.
However, in some cases you may need to do so.
The only thing you have to do now is
change the output to a new Layer to work non-destructively and you can press OK.
Photoshop will then create a new layer
and it will generate the pixels to cover the light stand.
Photoshop did a fantastic job in this case, but it doesn't always work this well.
When I tried the same technique on the other side, the result is not as good.
Notice the discoloration and blotches that appear.
You can try using the controls to get a better result, but in this case you're
probably better off recreating the backdrop from scratch.
It requires a bit more work, but the results are definitely worth it.
We'll do that next, but before we do, make sure that you subscribe
to the Photoshop training channel if you haven't already.
To recreate the backdrop from scratch, you will need to select the backdrop's color.
To do so, select the Eyedropper Tool
from the Toolbar or press the I key on the keyboard.
Then click over the image to sample the color.
But make sure not to select any highlights or shadows.
Now this is the foreground color.
Next, go into the new Adjustment Layer icon and choose Gradient.
Photoshop will choose the backdrop color we sampled.
By the way, when you're in the Gradient
fill window, you can drag the gradient to reposition it.
And from here you can change the angle.
And what you want to do is match
the backdrop's angle to keep it consistent with the original to get better results.
To do so, you can bring the scale down
to 10% to make the transition line easier to see.
Then rotate the angle about five degrees,
which will make it 95 degrees, and that should be a close enough match.
Then double-click on the gradient to open
the Gradient Editor. The swatches on top control opacity.
The one on the left is set to 100% opacity,
and the one on the right is set to 0% opacity,
which is why the gradient fades to transparent.
Click on the swatch
and set the opacity to 100% to make the entire
layer completely visible without transparency.
Then click on the bottom right swatch and click on the center to duplicate it
and double-click on the swatch to enable the color bigger.
Then you can make it darker.
Something like this should work and I'll press OK.
And this one on top I will also make just
a tiny bit darker, maybe something like this.
And I'll make the bottom left swatch a bit brighter.
Something like this should work.
And now that I'm looking at it,
I think the center one might be a bit too dark, so I can make it brighter.
Another way of doing it is simply by clicking on the brightness input box
here and tapping on the up arrow key to make it brighter.
It's up to you to decide what the brightness should be.
I'm just trying to get something that's similar to the original background.
Then I can bring up the scale to something that looks realistic.
In this case about 25% or so, and I'll press OK.
So this is my result.
That's my new background.
It's not perfect, but that's okay.
We can always fine-tune it. To stay organized,
I like to delete Layer Masks that I don't need, and I like to rename layers.
I'll call this layer Background.
Now I'm going to select this Background Layer and click on the lock icon to unlock
it, and I'm going to place it above the background layer.
You can of course click and drag it up if you want, but I prefer to use keyboard
shortcuts to work faster to move a layer up
in the layer stack. You can hold the Ctrl
key and the Right Bracket key to move the layer up.
The Bracket keys are found next to the letter P in North American keyboards.
What I'm going to do now is mask him out of the background so that we just have him
in the chair that he's sitting on and we use this as the background.
To do so, we can use any of the selection tools.
If you're in an older version
of Photoshop, you probably will have to use a quick selection tool which allows
you to click and drag over an image to make a selection.
Photoshop attempts to automatically find the edges.
But if you're a new version of Photoshop, there's actually a much easier way.
You can use the Object Selection Tool, and with this tool active,
you can hover over an image, and Photoshop will highlight in blue what
it thinks the main subject is, and you can select it.
Notice that in this case,
I can hover over the man and over the chair so I can click once to make
a selection, hold Shift and click again on the chair to select it.
So now that I have both selected,
I need to make sure that I have a good selection.
And here's the trick for you.
If you press the Q key on the keyboard, you will enter the Quick Mask mode.
The red overlay shows the areas of the image that are not selected,
and the pixels that appear in their normal color are selected.
So when I zoom in, you can see that the chair is not fully selected,
so we can add to the selection.
To add to the selection, you can use the Brush Tool,
and you can paint with white to reveal and black to conceal.
To reveal these parts of the chair, you can paint with white.
My brush is pretty big at the moment,
so I'll tap on the left bracket key to reduce the brush size,
and I'm just going to click once, hold the Shift key, and click again.
And Photoshop will create a straight line in between those two points.
And I can just continue painting normally on this other side, like so.
And I'm going quickly here.
But in your projects,
make sure you spend more time fine-tuning the smaller details.
Once you're done refining the Quick Mask,
you can press the Q key again to reveal the new selection.
With a selection active,
all you need to do is click on the new Layer Mask icon to create a mask
based on the selection.
The original background is now hidden in our newly created seamless
backdrop looks fantastic.
And you're probably thinking that the hair doesn't look great, but that's okay.
You can easily fix it.
Enable a Brush Tool, make white your foreground color,
and paint on the mask to reveal the original pixels.
Since the new backdrop and the original background are the same color,
you don't have to worry about making a precise mask.
Do the same for any areas with intricate detail.
Just review the original pixels from the background. Before you do anything else,
remember to rename your layer.
It's always a good idea to stay organized.
Next, we'll work on the shadow.
If you remember, there was a shadow below
and to the right of the chair, and we need to include it in our new backdrop.
If you hold Shift and click on the Layer Mask icon, you can hide the mask.
This is what this red X indicates so that you can see what that shadow look like.
Now I'm going to show you another very
useful trick to select this shadow so that you can use it in a composite.
If you press Ctrl Alt and the number two,
Photoshop will load the brightest pixels as a selection.
But we don't want to load the brightest pixels.
We want to load the dark pixels,
that's where the shadow is.
So we need to invert the selection.
To invert the selection,
you can press Shift Ctrl I and Photoshop inverts the selection.
It looks about the same.
Now, you probably can't tell the difference,
but when I go into the solid color fill layer here, I can now select black,
and you can see that Photoshop indeed had those pixels selected.
And we can create a layer that basically looks like that.
And we don't need the entire layer.
We only need the shadow.
So again, I'll go back into the Lasso Tool,
and I'll just make a selection around the shadow that I want right here.
With the selection active,
I'll use that same keyboard shortcut, Ctrl Shift I, to invert the selection.
So now I have the opposite pixel selected.
Next, let's look at the mask.
Hold Alt and click on the Layer Mask
thumbnail to review the mask so that we can see what we're doing.
Then I'm going to fill with black so that those pixels are hidden.
Currently, the background color is black, so I can press Ctrl and Backspace.
And there we go.
Ctrl D to deselect.
And this is what my mask looks like. And that's all I need.
This is the shadow,
but you might notice the hard edges, and it really doesn't look like a shadow.
We can easily fix that by going into Image > Adjustment > Curves and just darken
those brighter pixels like so, and that looks more like a shadow.
See that? I'll press OK.
I'll select the Brush Tool and I'll paint with black.
I'll make the brush larger by tapping on the right bracket key.
By the way, if you hold the Shift key
and use the left and right bracket keys, you can also adjust the hardness.
So, I'm going to keep a very soft brush so that I can get rid of these hard edges.
Once I have something that looks like this, I can hold Alt on Windows, Option
on the Mac and click on the Layer Mask thumbnail to bring back the pixels.
And you can see the shadow that I created there.
You can then re-enable this mask simply by clicking on the X.
And you can see the new backdrop with the shadow.
And make sure you place the shadow layer below the man layer.
So you can use the keyboard shortcut
for that Control in the left Bracket key to move the layer down in the layer stack.
And of course, to stay organized,
you can rename your layer, and the shadow looks fantastic.
If need be, you can reduce the opacity or
double click on the Layer thumbnail to change the color.
For example, you can select the color
of the background and then make it a bit darker and press OK.
I would recommend changing the Blending Mode to Multiply and then using
the Opacity slider to control the intensity of the shadow.
Also,
with the Shadow Layer Mask active, you can go into
Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur.
And you can blur the shadow just a little bit.
Three pixels in this case is okay.
That way I smooth out any imperfections that the shadow has.
And I think that this looks fantastic.
So now we have a background layer, a foreground layer, and a shadow.
Also, I recommend linking layers.
To do so, hold Shift and click on both layers to activate them.
Or use a keyboard shortcut hold
Alt Shift, and the left bracket key to activate the layer above.
I prefer shortcuts because it allows me to work faster.
With both layers active, you can click on this Link icon to link these layers.
Linking the layers will allow you to move
both layers at the same time while only selecting one.
So if I select the Man Layer, the shadow layer also moves.
The same thing is true with the Shadow Layer.
If I select the shadow layer and I move the shadow, the man moves with him.
Now let me show you another trick to make this image more realistic.
When you look at a real photo, you don't see smooth pixels.
Real photos have grain, and you need to add grain to your custom
backdrop to make the image look more realistic.
You can use the Grain slider in Camera Raw to add grain.
But in this tutorial, I will show you an alternate technique.
First, go into the Window menu and choose Patterns.
These are the patterns currently installed on my machine.
But Photoshop has a lot of great hidden patterns you can use.
You can find them here in the flyout menu under Legacy Patterns and more.
In the Patterns panel, you will now see this folder.
When you open up that folder, you can see more patterns.
In the 2019 patterns, you will see this group called Stone,
and from there you will have access to this pattern, Sandstone.
And we're going to use that as the texture for the background.
But I'm not going to apply the pattern as a fill layer.
I'm going to apply it as a layer style.
But I needed to make these patterns available before I could do that.
I'm going to select the Background.
Then I'll go into the FX icon and select Pattern Overlay.
From here I'm going to click on this dropdown
and under Legacy Patterns and More.
Go back into the 2019 Patterns.
And under stone I can select the Sandstone Pattern.
Then I'll change the Blend Mode to Overlay, which will blend both
the highlights and shadows, and I can reduce the Opacity.
And we want the really really low opacity
one or two percent, whatever you think works best for your image.
You can adjust the scale if you like.
I recommend changing the scale in 25% increments, so if the pattern is too big,
you can just reduce it down to 75% and that might give you a better result.
I'll press OK and I'll select the Zoom Tool and zoom in.
And that is the result.
I think it does a lot in bringing more realism into the image.
And now I want to talk about
the advantages of separating everything into individual layers.
With the background selected,
you can enable the Type Tool and type anything you want.
For example, the word behind.
And with the Move tool, you can drag this layer around,
creating the illusion that the text is behind the man.
And of course, this is accomplished by separating everything into its own layer.
And by the way, if you want to learn how to resize an image without stretching it,
then make sure you watch this two minute video.