Photoshop Tutorial: Select And Mask & Quick Selection

In this video, You will learn to extract a foreground from a background using the Select and Mask workspace. You will learn what all tools and sliders in the select and mask do and how to use them properly to make professional masks.

So, have you ever tried to use the Select and Mask feature in Photoshop and just thought there’s just too much going on there? I’m gonna show you the easy way to use it. Hello, and welcome to It’s Never Too Late To Learn. My name is Charles Cabrera. Here we bring you short, and easy tutorials for everyone just starting out with Photoshop, LightRoom, and photography. If you like learning this way, please consider subscribing and hit that bell notification so you don’t miss anything. Today’s video is all about the Select and Mask workspace in Photoshop CC. Let’s get into it. Here we are in Photoshop. We are going to cut this model out of her background, her white background, and place her on this photo. It’s best that if you’re going to be doing compositing, to shoot somebody on a plain background, and then cut them out of that and put them into whatever photo you want to. So this is pretty fun, and compositing is challenging and it’s fun, But, trying to make somebody look like they belong in a photo is a challenge. So here we go. Up here on the Menu bar, with the Quick Selection Tool selected, you can see at the top, there is Select Subject and Select and Mask tools up here. Now you can make a selection here with the Quick Selection Tool, and then go into the Select and Mask tool and refine it there, but there’s a quicker way that we can do everything all in one place. If I click on Select and Mask, this brings me into these Select and Mask workspace. And on the side here, and on the toolbar on the left, we have Quick Selection Tool, which we can use to make the selection right here. We have the Refine Edge Brush, which will give us an edge that after we make a selection, we can refine it using that. We also have a Brush Tool. We can actually brush in areas that we want to add or subtract from our selection. Then we have Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Lasso Tool, two other tools that we can use to either add to our selection or make selections using it completely. And we have the Hand Tools, so we can move our image around. And the Zoom Tool. And for the Quick Selection Tool, up here on the toolbar we can add or subtract from the selection, using the plus and minus. And we can also change the cursor size up here. So those are the tools that we can use to make our selections and refine them. And over here we have a View Mode. And these are going to be all the View Modes we’ll go over later, and explain how they’re used to actually see our layers here we have to see our subject in the background differently. Right now we’re on the Onion Skin, and I’m going to show you how that works right now, But let’s make a selection. There’s a couple of different ways to make a selection. Let’s use the Quick Selection Tool, and just paint over the subject. And as you can see, Photoshop is finding the edges where it thinks the subject is. In the Onion Skin view, this transparency slider, as you could see, if I change the Transparency over here to 100%, you can see, or get an idea how this subject is starting to look against the background. And here it gets completely both backgrounds intact. So, just find a spot where it’s easiest for you to tell. And if we continue to use the Quick Selection Tool, hold ALT or Option to add the selection to this area right here. But then there’s another way, which might be quicker. Instead of using the Quick Selection Tool, we can come up here to the top and click on Select Subject. This is a builtin tool to Photoshop that automatically selects your subject, and as you can see, it did a pretty good job. It was quicker than using any other selection tool. So you can come right into the Select and Mask workspace, come up here to the Select Subject, and get your cutout right away. And now, we’re gonna refine this cutout. I’m gonna zoom in, using the command and plus keys. And hold the space bar and use the Hand Tool. And there are a couple of different ways that I can use these tools up here. I’m just going to use them at random here just to show you how they work. I’m going to use the Lasso Tool and I am going to hold down ALT or Option and draw around the area that I want to remove or add to the selection. Once I complete the selection, it will remove that area. That is one way. That’s one tool I could use. I could use the Brush Tool. And I can use the left and the right brackets to make it, to make the brush larger or smaller. Zoom in a little bit more. Hold the ALT down and paint. I can make my brush a little bit smaller with the left bracket. Hold ALT or Option, and paint. So these are just tools that I’m showing you that you can further refine your selection. And selections sometimes don’t have to be 100% accurate, because it’s gonna depend on your background. Sometimes the background and your selections blend just perfectly and you don’t have to refine them more than necessary. So you don’t have to work as hard at it, but there are times in compositing where it has to be perfect. So, I’m holding down the space bar and I’m just moving around the image. So the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Can use that the same way. Just click, and make a bunch of points. That’s an example of using that tool. And you can take your time and decide which tool you wanna use. So again, I’m using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. You might find that you want to use a couple of different tools to keep making your refinements on your selection. So I’m gonna use the Brush Tool now. So I have the ALT or Option held down as I’m painting here. And getting a small area. Holding the space bar down, I’m going to go around the image, and we’re gonna come back to the hair. Incidentally, that’s one of the most challenging areas when you’re compositing is to work with hair and cutting it out. So that’s the first step. With the Quick Selection Tool selected, use the Select Subject button at the top, then use your Hand Tool and move around the image. Use the Quick Selection Tool, or the Lasso Tool, or the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Or the Brush Tool to get in there and get your selection to the point where it’s got all the major areas selected. So again we’re in the Onion Skin View Mode. And here’s all the different View Modes that we’re gonna go through right now. But notice they all have shortcuts as do the tools for all the selections over here on the left. So again, Onion Skin just helps you see the foreground and the background and give you a better idea of how things are looking after you, say, made a selection. As we change the transparency, you can see how it’s allowing you to see what you’re working on. So in View Mode, the marching ants, this is your selection. You’re just getting the view. Overlay, just another way to look at your selection to see what areas are selected out. You can see that the areas that are dark are not selected. Or you could have it on black, on white, on black and white, and on layers. So different views depending on how you want to. It gives you a better view of your cutout on different backgrounds because, on lighter backgrounds, you might not see as much. But the darker background you have on a cutout, you can see more. Let’s use some more of these tools in the Select and Mask workspace. So something to note about the overlay view. So what I can do is I can change this color to maybe a gray, hit okay, and now I’m able to see what my cutout looks like so far on a gray background. And again I can come in here and refine some more. ALT or Option, I’m using the Brush Tool now. As you become familiar with the Select and Mask workspace, you’ll find that there are certain tools that you may or may not use. You’ll have your own workflow, but I will show you, with the Quick Selection Tool selected, you can come up here and choose show edge. And down here in edge detection, this is gonna show you the edge that Photoshop, basically the edge that it’s trying to define. And smart radius. See I can make the edge smaller or bigger, and smart radius figures out that edge itself. So this is the edge that Photoshop thinks that it’s going to refine. So like I say, some people like to use this, and it depends on the situation, but I prefer to not use that and concentrate mainly on the global refinement down here. So, to show you how some of these global refinements work, I’m going to choose the black and white option here, in the View Mode, and zoom in a little bit. Kind of give you an idea of how this works. So for smoothing, you could see that it smooths out these lines. Increase the smoothness a lot and you can see it makes a huge difference in that. Feather is, it kind of blurs your line. And here’s contrast. You see that it affects the soft edges. Can see more soft edges. Shift edge moves soft edge borders inward. It’s good to help remove unwanted background colors from selection edges. Keep in mind, this is your mask, of your selection. The white areas are visible, the black areas are hidden. So now that we’ve explained a little bit about these sliders here in the black and white mode, which, or view, which is actually your mask. Let’s go back to your overlay and let’s, this is something that you would typically do. Some of these controls, its a balance between them, but you wouldn’t overdo too many of these. So, just a little bit of smoothing and a little bit of feathering, remember that to blur contrast, you can shift that over. And as you can see here, it doesn’t need the edge shifted over. You’re trying to play with these here and get the best settings that you can. So, a tip here when you’re using the select mask workspace. All these adjustments that we did in the global refinements are really good for more straighter edge areas and you don’t want to use the refine edge tool at this point on the hair because all these adjustments were made, all these adjustments were made, like I said, really for straighter edges. So, what we’re gonna do is come down here and we’re gonna output our selection to a layer mask. So, this is what it looks like right now. So, like I was saying before, the amount that you’re actually going to be working on your cutout depends on your background too because sometimes you don’t have to make it 100% perfect because it blends on to your background. But now, let’s go back in and work on the hair. Double click in our layer mask brings up the properties, so we can click on Select and Mask. And now we can use the refine edge tool. Gonna zoom in here a little bit and just paint on the outside of her hair, just like this and let Photoshop do the work to bring in, bring her hair into this. Make sure to refine the edges. So, again, I came in here once, did all the global refinements to the straight edges, output the selection to a layer mask, and came back in and just used the refine edge tool around her hair. And now, there’s something else we could do to help our image here. You see up here? In the hair, there’s a little bit of white fringing. That’s something that you’ll never 100% get away from when you’re doing composites. There’s always gonna be some fringing. So, many techniques to work on that. But here we’re concentrating on the Select and Mask workspace. But, if I come down here, something may help is the decontaminate color. So, I can click that and I can vary how that looks. So, see I got rid of some of that fringing. The thing is here now, what’s going to happen is it’s gonna create a new layer with a new layer mask. So just be aware of that. And, I’m going to say “okay” and that looks a lot better. So, now we have our subject cut out and here on this background. I could choose another background. Of course, I may want to resize her but this is basically the idea of compositing. And there are other things you would do, of course. You would match the subject to the background, color-wise, and brightness. But this is the basic idea here and originally, when I brought any of these backgrounds and the subject into Photoshop, I made it a Smart Object. So, if you wanna know more about Smart Objects, see the card above. Masks, any of the masks we’ve created here, also if you wanna know about masks, check the card above. But here again, I can move her around anywhere to where it looks good. And there’s our subject in the background. So, that was a selected mask workspace. Wasn’t so bad, huh? Just remember that even though there’s a lot of features there, not everything has to be used when your working at masking out something you could pick and choose parts of the tool that suits you best. So, that brings us to the question of the day; What features of the Select and Mask did you like the most? Let me know on the comments below. So, thanks again for watching. If this video was helpful give a like and please consider subscribing. If you want more short easy tutorials on Photoshop, see the ones above. And remember; It’s Never too Late To Learn. See yo in the next video.