Unmesh Dinda 0:00 Whenever there's a distinct color in the background,
it makes more sense to use the Color Range feature to extract the subject out of the
background precisely.
However, did you know that the Color Range allows you to mask in the subject real time?
But, even after using Color Range, you might come across issues like color casts, halos
or fringes.
But, no worries.
We'll learn how to solve that very easily.
So without any further ado, let's get started.
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Back in the magical world of Photoshop.
And if you want to go ahead and download this photo and follow along, you already know what
to do.
Check the links in the description.
Before we do any kind of masking, it's wise to bring in the new background first before
you even extract the subject out of the old background.
Why?
Because you might save a few steps.
Let me show that to you.
So first of all, let's go to my File Explorer or Finder and drag and drop in the new background
over the subject, over the canvas right there.
Once you do that, adjust it, it's fine for me, hit Enter or Return.
Now, I want to make some changes.
I want to remove the black patches in here.
So, let's convert this.
Let's rasterize the layer.
Right click on it and choose Rasterize Layer, because I don't want to create so many layers
and smart objects and stuff, it's fine.
Let's choose the regular Healing Brush tool right in here.
Now, let's take a sample and just cover up the black areas.
So, hold the Alt or Option, click to take a sample from the surrounding areas and then
just paint over these areas.
You don't have to pay so much attention to the details because it's anyway the background,
but, you're welcome to pay the attention if you want to.
All right.
Now once you have done that, I've done a very shabby job but, doesn't matter.
So, once you have done that, let's bring the texture below the background, but, it's not
possible.
Why?
Because the background is locked.
So, we need to unlock it first.
So, just click on the lock and it unlocks it, or you can also double click on the layer.
Anyway, just bring in the texture below the subject.
Now it's time for us to remove all the pink.
See, the background has a distinct color.
What if we tell Photoshop to remove all the pink?
It can be done very easily.
First of all, let's name the layers because it's important for organization.
So I'm going to name it Subject.
Now, let's go to Select and then Color Range, because we're going to select.. what we're
going to select ? A color.
So, Select and then Color Range.
Don't get confused with the menus.
The menu shows what it does, alright.
So Select and then Color Range.
Now, inside of that, we need to select the pink area, but, we cannot see any of it.
First of all, let's set the Selection Preview to None.
We don't want any of it.
We just want to see the normal image, right, just like this.
Now decrease the Fuzziness all the way to the left, make sure Sampled Color is selected.
And here's the trick.
Select the first Eyedropper, right, and click on a pink area which is not the subject.
Now what you do, you select the '+' Eyedropper tool, and a lot of people do this.. keep clicking
on the pink areas outside the subject.
Instead of doing that, did you know that you can also paint or draw with the '+' Eyedropper
tool?
Yes, you can.
So instead of just clicking, you can just click and drag and draw around the subject.
Just make sure you don't draw over any of the hair because it's going to select the
hair that way or any of the part of the subject.
So just draw and instantly you'll see the selection becoming so perfect.
Have a look at this, white are the areas which are selected, black are the areas which are
not selected.
So right now we are selecting the background in order to delete it or hide it behind a
mask or whatever you want to do.
So most of it is now selected.
Now what we want to do, this is important, just invert this.
So right now, the background is selected and we can invert it in real time and make sure
subject is selected.
Just the opposite.
So simply click on the Invert button right there and as you can see subject is now white
and the background is black.
Now, have a look at the background texture, it is more closer towards white, right.
So, set the Selection Preview from None to White Matte.
Everything that is selected will be in color and everything else which is not selected
will be in white.
You can also choose Black Matte if you wish to.
But for this one, select White Matte, because we have a bright background.
Now let's zoom in and now what you do, you see it in real time, and that allows you to
see how much fuzziness you would need.
So, increase the Fuzziness.
If you go too high, parts of the subject will be deselected, we don't want any of that.
See, subject is getting deselected, that's okay, because her face also has some pink
in it.
If he had a blue background, it would be super easy but, pink is a little difficult.
So, let's keep it at somewhere about, make sure the hair is not frying up, let's keep
it at somewhere about 54.
That's okay.
Just make sure the edges look all right.
Now once you've made sure everything is good, just hit OK.
Now you have a selection, just click on the Mask button and you're good to go.
Just kidding, you're not good to go.
We have to make some adjustments here and there.
So first of all, let's refine the Mask, that's the first thing.
So, hold the Alt or Option and then click on the Mask right there.
That way it shows up the Mask.
Keep in mind, all of the subject should be white and the background should be black.
So, you can take the brush, and here is one more trick, and trick is the Blend Mode called
Overlay.
So, if you go ahead and choose the Blend Mode of the brush from Normal and if you choose
Overlay, now have a look at this, if I zoom in, let's decrease the Flow to somewhere about
20%, right.
Right now, what is the color?
Black.
Change it to white.
Press X to toggle between the foreground and the background.
Make the brush a little smaller and now when you paint over the hand, that's fine, it's
just brightening it up.
But if you paint outside, it's just not painting outside.
It's only going to paint in areas which are closer to white.
It just won't paint in absolutely black areas.
It just won't.
See, how easily we are painting and maintaining the accuracy at the same time.
We're not painting outside it accidentally.
So, let's increase the Flow to somewhere about 50%.
And let's start painting inside her hand, just like that.
And there might be some left out areas and you can fill it for the Normal Blend Mode
later.
But for now, let's fill in the obvious.
You don't have to care so much about accuracy because you cannot paint accidentally outside.
So, let's keep on painting.
By the way to check the Mask, you can always hold the Alt or Option and click on the Mask
to bring the image and hold the Alt or Option again, click on the Mask to show the representation
of the Mask.
And now for the areas you just cannot paint with Overlay, let's move to Normal.
It will be just a normal brush.
With white selected, hold the Alt or Option and click on the Mask, just select this properly.
And now we can just work on this.
Change the color from white to black, press X, and now just make a nice outline around
it.
Because the belt was pink, it was also selected.
By the way if you wondering how did I rotate that, you just need to hold the 'R' key, and
once you hold that, the Rotate tool shows up.
Rotate it as much as you want and when you release the 'R' key, it goes back to the brush
tool.
If it doesn't just select the brush tool, you can always hold the 'R' key again and
click on Reset View and release it to get back to the brush tool.
Now, let's do the other side.
Now, it's time for us to fill in the gaps.
So hold the Alt or Option, click on the Mask and just fill in these areas with white.
Flow, we can increase to 100%.
You can take a hard brush if you wish to, Hard Round.
Let's take a soft brush here.. hard brush again.
Now, keep in mind, we wouldn't have any of these problems if the background was blue
or green or something other than the skin tone.
The skin tone already has a little bit of pink.
So that is why we are having the difficulties.
Seems like we are good to go.
But have a look at this.
The hair has some pink still on it.
How do we remove that?
Let us learn how to remove color fringing just with a Blend Mode.
Yes, it's that simple.
Create a new layer at the top just like this.
And you can name this Hair Color, or wherever you want, Hair Fringe Color.
Let's name it Hair Fringe Color, right.
Now, if I paint anything on this layer, so if I take the brush and let's say I started
painting pink, it's going to paint all over, right.
But, if I want to limit it just to the subject, so we can hold the Alt or Option and click
on the layer between these two.
Now, what happens is, it creates a Clipping Mask.
So, now whatever you paint, it's kind of limit it just to the layer which is beneath it.
That is the theory we're going to use.
Let's go back.
All right, let's take a soft round brush.
Now let's zoom into the hair and take the sample of the hair and just paint outside.
And don't forget to clip it.
By the way, there's also a shortcut to clip and that is Ctrl + Alt + G / Command + Option
+ G.
It also creates a Clipping Mask.
So you can either hold the Alt or Option and click on the line between these two layers
or press the shortcut.
Now once you paint it, it's going to paint a flat color.
What to do?
We just want the color.
So, change the Blend Mode from Normal to whatever you want, and that is Color.
Now have a look at this.
Here's the before, here's the after.
The pink is going away.
So, just take a sample and paint over it.
It is as simple as that.
Take a sample from a nearby hair and paint over it.
Take a sample and paint.
See, how easy that is.
Now, I'm doing a very quick job in here.
You can take all the time in the world to do this.
Easily remove all the pink just by using a simple Blend Mode.
Take a sample by holding the Alt or Option, click on in to take a sample.
And by the way, if it's not taking the sample, just make sure the Eyedropper is selected
and then Sample All Layers or Current and Below is selected.
Sample Size should be 3 by 3 or 5 by 5.
We don't want to use point sample.
Let's get back to the brush and then hold the Alt or Option, click to take a sample
and just paint.
And for this background, you can probably stop right here.
We already saved a lot of steps.
Wait till I bring in the dark background, because then you might have to do a couple
other steps as well.
Now, when I look at it, have a look, around the corner there's some pink color cast right
there.
You can easily solve that as well.
So let's go to the Fringe Color layer or let's create one more new one, and clip it as well.
Hold the Alt or Option and click on the line between these two, change the Blend Mode to
Color.
You want to keep it separate because maybe you want to increase or decrease the Opacity.
So, if you think the hair color has been too much, you can of course, decrease the Opacity
if you wish to.
I'm going to keep it 100.
But, it's a good idea to keep it separate.
Now, in here, I can name this Body or Shirt or Clothes, whatever I want.
Let's take the brush and sample this color of her dress and just paint.
Make sure the Blend Mode is Color.
See, we're getting back that and we are removing the color cast.
Now here, something is looking fishy.
So, we're going to take an Eraser and just erase this one, because that was just not
looking alright.
Anyway, now let's take the brush again and take a sample from here and just paint in
over here.
Take the eraser, just erase this extra area.
Let's take the brush again.
And just done a couple of more areas.
And that's all fine.
Every color cast is removed and it's done.
But if you bring in another background, it might create problems.
Let's go to my File Explorer or Finder, I'm going to bring in this dark blue background.
Have a look at this, you might have to do a lot of extra steps.
So at the top, adjust it any which way you want, I'm going to hit Enter or Return and
let's place it under the subject.
Now, have a look at this, the hair just doesn't look right, just doesn't fit in.
So you might have to do some steps.
The first thing we can try is Decontaminate Colors.
What it does is that it keeps the mask intact and just expands the inside of it to fill
in those edges.
Here's how it works.
So, select the Mask of the subject, right, you can double click on it to open the Select
and Mask and Select and Mask is available in Photoshop CC 2015.5 and later.
If it doesn't open, if the Properties of the mask show up, if you have set it up that way,
just simply click on Select and Mask right there.
Alternatively, you can also use a tool to get there.
So with the Mask selected, select any selection tool and then simply click on Select and Mask.
Now inside of that, select the view - Onionskin, so that the background is shown.
Make sure the transparency is 100 so whatever is selected shows up, whatever is not selected
doesn't show up.
So just simply scroll down on the right hand side and check Decontaminate Colors.
Make sure New Layer with Layer Mask is selected and have a look at it, it's solved.
Just zoom in.
Have a look.
So, before Decontaminate Colors - after Decontaminate Colors.
So, it simply expands it.
Now, you can, of course, control the amount of it if you think it's too much.
For this example, I'm going to be at 100 and hit OK.
So, it's going to create a new layer with the same mask in here.
The old one will be right there below it turned off.
Now, if you look closely, when we'll turn off the Mask, you'll see the expansion very
clearly.
So let's hold the Shift key and click on the Mask to turn it off and have a look at the
expansion that it did.
So, it expands it a little bit and then keeps the Mask intact.
So, hold the Shift key, click on the Mask back again, just bring everything back.
Now, the hair is fine.
But, if you look closely, look at the outline of the hand, it just doesn't look right.
It has a pink color cast to it.
So, you have to go back to Body and then take the brush and just sample and paint on those
areas.
So hold Alt or Option, take a sample from the skin and just paint on the edges and that
will be very easily gone.
See, you're having to do some extra steps according to the new background.
That was easy.
No problem at all with that.
Okay.
Now once we do that, have a look at the edge as well, we are seeing that white line around
the edge.
That's no problem as well.
So hold the Ctrl or Command, click on the Mask and then simply contract it a little
bit.
Go to Select - Modify and then Contract.
Let's contract it by 1 pixel for this image.
Hit OK.
So it goes a little inside.
Now press Ctrl + Shift + I or Command + Shift + I to invert the selection.
Take the brush, select the Mask, make sure the foreground color is black and just paint
on these areas and they will be gone.
Right now, it's not going.
Why?
Because the Blend Mode is Lighten.
Select Normal and just paint.
See, they are going away.
And by the way, you can hide the marching ants in real time.
So, if you press Ctrl or Command + H, it just hides.
It's still there, it just hides.
Now when you paint, you can just see clearly what's happening in there.
So remove those white lines very, very easily.
No problem at all.
And when you're done with that, you can always press Ctrl or Command + H to bring it back
and see where the marching ants and then press Ctrl or Command + D to deselect.
To make the image more interesting, let's create some shadows.
So, with the Subject Copy layer selected, double click on the right hand side of the
layer, this opens up the Layer Style dialog box and click on Drop Shadow at the bottom.
Right.
Now we're going to choose the angle right there.
You can, of course, control the distance so on and so forth.
But you know what the best thing to do here is.
It is this.
Real cool people control shadows like this.
They don't play with these settings.
They just move the shadows on the image like that.
Alright.
So, once you have adjusted it according to your liking, so I'm going to keep it right
there, that's fine.
Let's increase the size, increase the softness just like that, I'm happy with this, and you
can, of course, increase or decrease the Opacity.
Let's go for 45 and then hit OK.
Now what you can do, very interestingly, you can separate the Drop Shadow onto another
layer.
So, with that layer selected, Subject Copy, go to Layer - Layer Style and then Create
Layer.
Just hit OK.
Now the Drop Shadow is on another layer, you can also control it in any which way you want.
You can decrease the Opacity if you wish to, but I'm going to keep it at about 100, that's
fine.
Now for the hair, we shouldn't have so much of a shadow, because hair is not thick, it's
very thin.
Light passes through it, most of the light.
So, what we need to do, we need to create a Mask in here.
So click on the Mask button and now you can take the brush, big soft black brush and just
paint away the hair.
Everything else is fine.
Maybe you want to brighten up the background.
So, with the background selected, click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose
Curves and maybe, let's try increasing the brightness just a touch like that.
Now, that is looking great.
So that's how to precisely select the hair and the subject when you have a distinct color
in the background.
All you need to do, here's the basic thing, basic gist of it, all you have to do is to
go to Select and then Color Range.
Now, inside of Color Range, you know the drill, first make sure Sampled Color is selected.
Then you can, of course, go for None first and then White Matte or Black Matte, depending
upon the background.
Decrease the Fuzziness, select the first Eyedropper and just pick an area of the background.
That's it.
Now with the '+' Eyedropper, you draw around to make sure most of the background is now
selected.
Now once that is done, you can control the Fuzziness and then just hit OK.
That will give you a selection and you can use that selection to create a Mask.
You can then refine the Mask using a variety of techniques.
For this example, we used Overlay with the brush, we chose white and we choose the Blend
Mode - Overlay that allows us to restrict our painting only to the areas which are closer
to white.
It can be dark gray too.
However, it just won't paint on the black areas.
Then to remove the color fringing around the hair, we used the Color Blend Mode, remember,
to remove all the pink, and then we did the same for the body.
Now, for some contrasting background, you may still see the fringes and for them, you
can use Decontaminate Colors inside of Select and Mask.
Even if that doesn't work, you can use this video to find out what to do.
And also please feel free to adjust the brightness or the darkness of the current background
to match with that of the subject.
So, that was pretty much it for this video.
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Till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai