All language subtitles for 277730-1 - Selection Tools - Compositing in Photoshop From Start to Finish.en

(upbeat music)

Welcome to Compositing in Photoshop from Start to Finish,

I'm Bret Malley.

In this class you will learn how to select elements

from different images and bring them together

in one image of your own creation.

More or less mind photography.

You imagine it and you combine it together.

You'll learn how to make all of those elements

blend together in your composite

so it looks more realistic, and especially

it's really important to make it look seamless.

You'll learn techniques for shooting original elements

for composite image.

In short, this class will give you all the knowledge

you need in order to get started making your own

composite creations where anything is possible.

I love compositing in Photoshop so much.

I am very lucky I get to teach photography

and Photoshop compositing full-time as a college instructor.

I wrote a book about it, Advanced Compositing in Photoshop

through Adobe Press and Peachpit Press,

and even have fun in my spare time

with a little three-year-old nut

that runs around and keeps me busy.

We do composites together

and we do very supernatural feats

and this is all in and around where we live

near Portland, Oregon.

We'll start the class by learning

how to make perfect selections,

the foundation skill for great compositing.

Next you'll unlock the true power of Photoshop

by turning selections into masks

and fine tuning your layers.

Then you'll see how to make targeted edits to your layers

and then finally global edits to bring

all the elements in your composite together seamlessly.

Then we'll get behind the camera and learn how to shoot

an individual image for a larger composite.

Finally we'll bring together everything you've learned

to complete an otherworldly and a totally surreal image.

In addition to this video content,

in the class materials you'll find all the images

you need to follow along, and you'll also find

some great resources I've picked out for you.

So go ahead and download those now.

I'm here to help so if you have any questions,

please, please be sure to ask them.

I'd also love to see what you're working on

so don't be shy, post your images.

With that, let's get started.

Composites open up a whole world of possibilities

so you can use them to realize any creative vision.

I refer to it as this brain photography,

or taking a picture of your mind,

of what you can imagine.

So whether you're doing something whimsical,

something that's fantastical, or surreal,

or something that's just fun and playful

and family-oriented like this one that we're seeing here,

right, with levitation.

The lessons in this class

are really designed to be taken in order

because every skill and knowledge

and everything that we go over

is going to be built upon the previous lesson.

Plus we'll be working on elements of a final image

that we're gonna be shooting in lesson five

and finally compositing it all together in lesson six

and putting it all together.

In this lesson you will understand

how to use the various selection tools.

You'll learn how to choose the right tool

for the right task.

And finally see how to refine your selections

with refine edge feature in the options bar of Photoshop.

So here's an example image of my son pulling me in my wagon.

Just to deconstruct, so we're all on the same page

of what compositing actually is,

and the pieces that come together for this.

When you're creating this, a composite is, again,

made up of different kinds of pieces to a larger puzzle;

They're all shot separately.

It usually begins with bringing in some kind of background

or shooting a background.

Then you bring in the various subjects

that you're gonna have in there.

Before you know it, you piece it all together.

And this is a good explosion of it

so you can just see the different elements

and how it stacks together in the layers.

But that, in essence, is what a composite is, right?

Bringing these pieces together.

So to do anything like this

the most fundamental skill that you really need

to build in Photoshop is creating good selections.

It all becomes really apparent

when you don't have good selections

and it takes so much more time in Photoshop

than you really want to spend.

So it's important to know your various selection tools,

how they work, and times to use some tools,

and times not to use others,

but to really get the most clean

and accurate selections you can to begin with.

Then you can take it in to copying

and bringing images together,

and then finally adding in the masks.

Getting a very strong handle

on all the selection tools is really important.

We're going to be bringing this little guy

into the composite we saw earlier

where he's climbing up the wall in the other one.

So to do that, again, I need to use some selection tools.

They live over here on the left-hand side

with all the tools panel, where all the other tools are.

And you have the rectangular marquee tool,

you have the lasso tool.

And any time, if you didn't already know,

where you see this little triangle

it's kind of like a handle for a drawer,

and you can do various changes and alterations

to each of those.

There's ones for each of these selection tools.

So the one we're really gonna begin with right now

is the marquee tool.

And this is the tool that I use all the time

for bringing my pieces together into the composites.

I get my marquee tool, shortcut M,

and then I'm just gonna click and drag this across.

And when I use this tool

I want to make sure that I have lots of space.

So one, it gives me a couple different advantages

of using the marquee tool.

Firstly I don't have to select the entire image

and bring it over, and bloat that file,

especially if I'm working in hundreds of layers,

which sometimes happens.

And second, it allows me to select

beyond what that subject is and bring him in,

so that way if I change my mind or I didn't notice

that I didn't select a finger, or something like that,

then I have enough there to work with

and I can push and pull it in the mask.

But this is a solid go-to for me

for copying and pasting it in there.

So for copying, on a Mac it's command-C,

for PC it's control-C.

And I'll just copy and paste that

and you can just see in that final image here

of how it was just pasted right in there, moved.

I did some other reconstruction, but that's the main idea.

So the marquee tool,

fantastic for just doing general selections

a bit larger than the actual subject

and what you need, and their shadow.

That way you have some seams to paint it all together

and make it look seamless.

The lasso tool is also a really great one.

It's a good solid go-to for me

any time I want to do more organic selections.

I'm gonna be opening up and playing with this image here

just to show you how this tool works.

Let me double click on it in Bridge

and that brings it straight in to Photoshop.

The lasso tool, shortcut L on the keyboard,

you can just jump to it that way,

is gonna be this guy right here.

And what this does is

it lets you draw various shapes around there.

And again, I'll often use this

for when I'm doing content-aware which,

just as a heads-up, I'll do that as a demonstration now

but it's a destructive edit.

A quick note about destructive edits.

When we talk about a non-destructive workflow,

I mean, that's using the power of Photoshop

where you get to do layers

and you're not altering something permanently.

You get to go back and alter that layer,

or try another layer version of it.

So whenever you know you're doing a destructive edit

like I'm about to demo,

at least make a copy of that layer before you do it.

Very quickly, here's a tip about selection tools in general.

Command-D to deselect.

So you can see that I have marching ants

right now on the screen.

So that's the selection.

I hit command-D, or control-D on a PC,

but I'm on a Mac here.

I'm gonna make a copy of this layer by hitting command-J.

Again, many ways to do any one thing in Photoshop.

I could also drag this guy to this new layer.

Even though I'm doing a destructive edit

I'm at least doing it on a new layer

so if I don't like the changes I'm doing

I can always go back.

But okay, back to the lasso tool.

This is a really neat one to demonstrate

where sometimes, when prepping a background for a composite,

which you'll see in prepping for the final image

that we're going to composite in lesson six,

I'll often select, sometimes small rocks,

or large rocks in the case of the last lesson,

and I'll do what's called content-aware fill.

So this is the shortcut shift-delete.

Or if we right clicked and did Fill,

and then we get this dialog box here.

This is where I'm going to select Content-Aware.

If it has a different default, just make sure you find this.

This is a really neat feature.

It doesn't have a whole lot to do with selection tools

but while we're on the topic here, might as well mention it.

This is where it's gonna analyze all the pixels around it

and fill in with its best guess of that content.

Each version it gets more and more incredible

of how it puts things together.

Sometimes it will put a tree up in the sky

but, you know, it's still a computer.

I'm going to hit OK with this

and we're gonna see what it did.

So, if you were looking closely here,

I'll undo it and go back and forth a couple times.

But it just completely took out that rock, right,

it is no longer there.

Let's do that for a few other ones here.

I'm just selecting around.

Quick note: I'm gonna zoom in so I can see what I'm doing.

Holding down option and scrolling with my, in this case,

my trackpad here, with two fingers in.

But however you scroll, if you hold down option

it's gonna zoom in exactly where your cursor is pointed.

It's a really good one.

Just a note: it's very sensitive.

It will go fast in and out,

so just do very subtle, very careful scrolling

and you should be good with that.

So now that I can see what it's doing here

I'm gonna do shift-delete again.

Actually, let's right click

so you can see that Fill feature.

So I right clicked on it.

Now you can see, right, the Fill option.

Same dialog box, does the same thing.

Shortcut is shift-delete.

Either way you want to remember it,

just make sure you can do it.

So I'm gonna hit OK again, and voila, it's gone.

Hit command-D to deselect.

Okay, it did an okay job.

Let's say I want this wave to be gone.

So this is all the same idea.

I'll often use this tool frequently for cleaning up

or really setting up the space and scene for a composite.

Sometimes there's just a telephone pole that was in the way,

sometimes it was a person,

sometimes it's an entire mountain.

So when you're doing it,

this form of selection is really helpful.

What it's not very helpful for

is if you're trying to get very accurate edges to something.

Let's say I wanted to select exactly what this is.

If I'm drawing and I don't have a tablet-- even then--

it's going to have little pieces.

Here I'll make it more dramatic.

Very little pieces that it's going to leave off,

and it's not going to be a very accurate selection.

So it's not good for finding those edges and trying to be

really accurate to whatever object you're on.

But it is good for doing larger,

and yet still organic selections

for doing something like content-aware

or getting a larger piece into a composite

for copying and pasting.

Jumping into the composite we're going to be doing

for the final, very end lesson.

Let's look at that background very quickly

just to see, just a demo.

I did some content-aware there,

plus some other things we'll get to.

But the main idea is we're going to be bringing

a bunch of different barns into this image here,

and we'll have it explained later, but for now--

Oh, and here's a sneak peak

of where we'll be going with this as we go.

But you'll learn all the various selection tools

for creating something like this.

As part of that, doing selections--

learning selections such as the quick selection tool

and refining that edge in the options bar

is really important.

So let's go in and show

how you might do a selection of this barn

and bring it in to a composite.

Here's the large barn, just by itself here.

Let's go in with a new selection tool

that we haven't talked about yet.

So we've gone over the marquee tool,

we've gone over the lasso tool,

and again, there's a drawer full of tools

that are kind of similar, and related cousins, if you will.

But now we're gonna talk about the quick selection tool.

This guy is amazing.

This is my ultimate, favorite selection tool.

The other ones are great and have their purpose

but this one is what its name implies.

It's very quick, it's very fast, and efficient.

And for the most part, it does a pretty decent job.

So you'll notice, right off the bat with this tool

that it comes equipped with a brush

and that's how you make your selection in this case.

I'm changing the size of my brush

with left and right bracket.

So left bracket to make it smaller,

right bracket to make it larger.

And that affects the way this tool works

because every time you have a large brush,

let's do it super large here,

it's going to be very general in everything that it selects.

It's not being picky at all, it's not be very discerning.

It just finds the nearest edge and says,

"Bah! Marching ant. That's a selection right there."

When you're small--

I'm gonna do command-Z to go back one step.

If I want to go back multiple steps, command-option-Z.

Substitute control if you're on a PC there.

So I undid that, or I could also deselect with command-d.

Practice those, keep those in mind.

I'm gonna make a small brush size

for the quick selection tool.

And by the way, as we're going here,

quick selection is W

because it's mixed in with the wand there.

If you have the wand selected you can hold down shift

and do shift-W, and that will toggle

between whatever is in that drawer,

whether that's a selection tool or anything else.

So cool little tip there.

Okay, so we have the tool that we want.

Let's look at it as a small selection.

Let me make a little tiny selection here.

So if we get it very small, and let's zoom in,

you'll notice how much more discerning.

It's doing panel by panel.

If it has a large group that's very similar it will do that.

But it's being a lot more discerning

with finding those edges.

Let's talk a little bit about

what this tool is and how it works.

The way that this tool functions, in essence,

is it looks for lines of contrast that it can jump to

depending on the radius of that brush itself.

So again, the large brush,

it's looking for general lines of contrast

that more or less match the radius of that brush.

In general, it works, the larger the brush the more general

and all-encompassing the selection.

Smaller the brush, more refined.

Another way to make it more refined,

because you'll often have this as the case,

where it will group things into that selection

that you did not mean to put in there.

So one way to go about is deselecting.

One way to get that accurate selection that you need

is to deselect.

So this works for just about all the selection tools.

If you want to subtract from your selection

using any of the other tools, you hold down option.

If I hold down option you'll see that this cursor here,

let's get it with some contrast, is right now a plus

and you'll see, when I hold down option right now,

it is now a minus.

So it's going to subtract from this selection

wherever I brush over.

And even though it's a large brush right now,

the more times I go over that content,

the more selective it's going to be,

the more discerning it is.

So you can refine that selection in a couple different ways.

One, by changing the size of that brush

and two, by going over it more times.

And each time it will try to find, okay,

what is this silly human actually trying to select?

It's trying to figure out the best communication

between you and the computer,

and translating what you intend to have selected.

So I'm going to subtract this right here,

holding down option as I drag along,

and it's able to get that a little more refined.

You'll notice that it bit into this a little bit.

Oh, and it jumped back there.

I'll minus some of this tree here.

Ah, so you'll notice that it said,

"Ah, you meant to deselect that whole area."

This is where I would go back over

that whole selection again

and each time it gets a little bit better at discerning

until you get it faster.

So with straight lines there's many different ways

to clean up a selection like this.

That's one way, going back and forth.

That could be tedious but in some situations that's faster.

Pick a way that works for you,

that's both efficient and fast as you're working.

One way to refine this selection

is by going into quick mask mode.

Quick mask mode, as it implies,

it's really prepping you for a mask.

We haven't really talked about masks yet

but the idea is that we are going to make all this content

that is not selected, disappear.

And we're going to do it non-destructively.

So we're not destroying that, we're not deleting it,

but we're gonna put a mask on it

so it's just invisible, we don't see it.

Like, you know, masking for when you're painting,

or something like that.

To go into quick mask mode it's gonna show

everything that's not selected

in this 50% transparent red.

So I hit Q on the keyboard

and that will jump into that mode.

And this is where I can paint in my selections with a brush

which is really awesome.

So if you're very much used to painting things

and you have a stylus,

or you're really good with a mouse or the trackpad,

this is a nice way to make selections.

However, this is a very easy way

to create what I call digital grease.

Once we get into masking we'll talk about that.

So make sure that when you're painting with this

that it is 100% fully red on there.

Otherwise there might be a partial selection.

So just be careful with all the tools you have here.

In this tool, if we're painting our selections

we're gonna need a brush.

In this case the shortcut for brush is B.

That's also this one over here on the left

that looks like a paint brush.

Thank you, Photoshop designers, for that.

Right now I have a spatter brush.

For this I want to make sure that I have a brush

that's matching, more or less, the radius of that.

In this case, not spatter.

So I'm gonna right click

and just choose what I call soft and fuzzy.

That's my go-to brush that's worked for so many things.

So if I want to get out, maybe there's a whole bunch

of little crumby parts all in a line.

If I want to draw in a straight line for something like this

this is a really great tip that is invaluable,

it comes into so many different plays.

So practice this over and over

until you have it I ingrained in your brain.

And make sure my opacity and flow,

up here in the options bar, 100%.

I want no, kind of, 50%,

no grease that's going to happen afterwards

from not having a fully opaque brush.

I'm gonna click one time.

I'm gonna hold down shift. I'm not drawing anything yet.

I'm gonna hold down shift on the keyboard.

I'm gonna click another time.

It's gonna draw a perfectly straight line

from point A, that first click,

to point B, where I clicked the second time.

Let me do that again.

So I'm gonna click once.

I'm gonna hold down shift and come up here to the top

and click another time and it did a perfectly straight line.

You notice that it bit a little bit into that

so I'm gonna go the opposite way.

Right now, painting with black

will take away from the selection

which I wanted to do.

In this case if I paint with white

it's going to bring into that selection.

So you can hit X on the keyboard

and that's the shortcut for flipping those.

Really helpful, especially when we get into masking.

So I'm gonna go back here, click once, hold down shift.

Just refine it.

And I can go back and forth with painting it out

and back and forth as much as I need to.

So I switch back to black

so that way I can subtract this a little bit too.

So I can go along this whole area here.

If I wanted paint this in manually, I could.

Otherwise if I wanted to go back to my selection

I could do that just by hitting Q

or by going down and hitting this guy here.

So the quick selection tool,

awesome for making very fast, quick selections

as its name implies, when I hit W, right,

so it's great for doing all of the selections.

We can spend time, get the whole barn out.

But moving right along into the magic wand tool,

also a tool in that same drawer,

again, that cousin of it.

If I hold down shift and hit W

it's going to switch over to the magic wand tool.

And let me get a good image to practice this one with.

This is a good example of how to use

the best case scenario of a magic wand tool

where it makes it so efficient.

In this case you just have a couple things to keep in mind

and then it's pretty straightforward, hopefully.

Look up in the options bar.

They have two features that you need

to always keep an eye on.

One is tolerance, that's how

open it is, or how closed, how selective it is,

or just all-encompassing for the kind of pixels it lets in.

And the other one is contiguous,

whether it's gonna be connected to

or not connected to the pixels around it.

So let's just do a couple very quick examples

so we can see how that works.

Here is tolerance 20.

Let me select this background here.

We can see how that works with background.

Quickly let me change this to tolerance 300

just so we can see what that looks like.

Oh, 255. Too high.

So let's change this to 255. Great, thanks.

It selected everything, right?

So there's just an example of it being very selective

versus all-encompassing.

The other one is contiguous.

So where this selection tool might be really good--

hitting command-D to deselect--

is bringing this maybe around 30 here

and selecting everything that's dark.

So I'm just gonna click once, and contiguous

will only select all the parts that are touching.

So I guess in these other parts they weren't touching,

or if there was something else that was isolated

off to the side it's not gonna select that.

So contiguous means they all have to be touching elements.

Let's do that same thing on the background here.

So, command-D.

Right now I clicked on the light.

Right now contiguous is off so it can jump over to this side

and jump over to these little islands.

I click on contiguous, do that again.

So they have to be touching.

Now it's only gonna get that one block, right,

the ones as far as that water spread of that selection,

how it spilled out there.

While the magic wand tool is great

for doing these selections of all very similar pixels,

it's really important that you refine

whatever selection you have,

and onto that we're going to talk about the

refine radius feature in Photoshop, up in the options bar.

So whatever selection tool you have,

this feature is really critical

to get just the right amount of selections.

You'll notice in this example

that it didn't select all these little lines here,

and there's a bunch of pieces that might be missing.

Refining that radius could really help

bring some other things out.

(upbeat music)

To show the power of the refine radius feature in Photoshop

I'm gonna be taking a look at this picture here.

We'll be playing with this composite

and bringing them together later on in the lessons as we go,

but it's a really good example

working with this model over here on the right.

I'm gonna find that subject

and test it with the visibility of this layer here.

And I'm gonna use my quick selection tool.

I'll get to where the refine radius tool is and all of that.

So with this quick selection tool

I'm gonna do something very simple and basic.

Quick note on when you're using this tool,

especially on people: stick to their bones.

If you can see where their bones may have been

that's gonna get you the most accurate selection.

Make sure to zoom in on places that you think you need.

I'm gonna intentionally leave that in

as part of the selection, and we'll see why later,

and we'll paint it out.

So very carefully-- or very quickly-- go through

and make sure the main bulk of your subject is selected.

And in this case I want to deselect some of this.

Don't worry, we're not actually

giving her a haircut in this.

And we'll show how this works later in just a second.

I'm gonna be deselecting,

holding down option to deselect some of this,

and again, I just want the main bulk of the subject selected

and nothing more.

So if I see some of these islands,

has a much better chance of expanding the selection.

Although this improves with every version of it,

it still works better by expanding the selection

with this refine edge tool here, feature,

rather than starting with too much and working in.

So once I have a basic selection of the subject

minus all of those hair strands,

we're not gonna worry about that yet.

I got the hand. Got the feet on both sides.

Got the sword, okay. So she's good to go.

The next part of where the selections become really fun

in getting it very clean, and clear-looking, and accurate,

is this refine edge feature up in the options bar.

Refine Selection Edge.

So I'm gonna click on it

and it's gonna bring me to this dialog box right here.

The refine edge dialog box

is really important for mastering and refining

all those little tiny selections on the edge,

and especially getting the edges very accurate.

And we have a few different parameters we can change

within this dialog box.

One is smoothness, and that will,

if you had some jagged edges in your selection,

it will kind of smooth those out.

Two is feathering.

I always feather whatever my selection is

at least a little bit, and this helps it

from being too cut-out looking and very collage-y.

Not good.

Contrast I don't really change a whole lot

but I do shift the edge.

And let's take a look at, when I have a selection

such as a person, a subject in here,

I want to first look at the skin.

Right now when we're looking at the edge,

it looks really sharp, too sharp.

So I really want to feather it, for one.

And then you always want to bite into that subject.

This is where I'm gonna shift the edge to the left

and this is gonna bite into there

and avoid getting those halos

which is another tell when you're compositing.

It just has a look, it pops out for some reason.

More often than not it's because

you didn't bite into that subject, and into that selection,

by shifting the edge in.

So this feature is really helpful in getting it right.

I typically do anywhere between 30 and 45,

depending on what the subject is

and how high-res your image is.

And then just a little bit of feathering.

.8 seems to do it most of the times

for images that are pretty in-focus.

When I use this tool I do it in two steps

when I'm doing it on a subject.

One for the radius of their skin

to get that the right softness

along the parameter, along those edges.

And then I'll come back into this feature

and do it again for the hair.

Because if I make my selection for the hair

and get all of those fine edges

and then I feather it and I do those other things,

it's gonna look terrible.

So first do it for one thing that you're looking at

such as the skin, then hit OK, which I'm gonna do right now.

Then I go back in to Refine Edge.

And this time I'm going to use this brush.

You'll notice, when I jump into this dialog box

it automatically equips me with this refine radius tool

that's right here.

This is only accessible when you're refining your edge,

and this is where it does literal magic.

This is where I can just paint big chunks of,

I mean, anything here.

I'm just painting out, not being selective at all,

and it will select every single hair

that's part of that image, which is really kind of crazy.

So I'm just gonna go up, and again,

I'm not being too picky with what I'm selecting.

I'm just kind of going out.

If you paint into the subject's face a little bit,

you can subtract.

Let's say we do this and I went into this subject.

You'll notice that perhaps that it created

a little bit of smoothness right there

where it was subtracting from her face.

So I'm gonna hold down option

and I can subtract this refine radius tool selection

so it's just on those edges.

So now it's not analyzing those pixels.

And finally you can do the same throughout, right,

get every little wisp of hair until it's just perfect.

Something to note, as you're working on this.

When you are selecting all of the pieces

it's better to work with in small--

with a small bit and not to just select island.

If there's an island of something you don't want selected,

make sure that stays not selected

and you'll have a much more accurate selection

of all the other pieces here.

But here we go, here's the subject

with all those pieces of hair, in very short order.

That's crazy. It used to take you hours upon hours

to get something that looked remotely like this.

So refining edge feature is an amazing and powerful feature

in Photoshop that you should always be using,

especially when you're trying to clean up a subject

and getting something like hair,

or it works on the edge of a mountain, and trees,

and any number of things that we'll show you.

Definitely practice all of these selection tools

so that way you know which one will make the right selection

for what you need.

So get a feel for how they all work

so you can start choosing the right one

and figure out a workflow

that is strong for your own process there.

If you want to practice

on this very subject and this mountain,

if you go to your class materials

this image will be provided

where you can play around with this hair

the same time as we're working on in all our composites.

In the next lesson you'll see

how to use some of these great selection tools

and unlock the power of masks,

which is really fun and so important for compositing.

Also some of the ways to use healing tools,

of course, non-destructively.

(upbeat music)