How to Quickly Select Images - Cut Out Detailed Images in Photoshop CS5

This video covers details on how to effectively select/cut out parts of an image in Photoshop without using the pen tool. It shows how you can select detailed portions of an image (such as hair) without losing detail and without taking 4 hours to do it. This video is meant to plant a seed that will allow you to be creative and try the tools out for yourself and experiment with them - remember, practice makes perfect.

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Closed Caption:

good morning this is michael schultz and
I just thought I'd go ahead and put
together a brief tutorial I'm here in
Atlanta and a friend of mine here at a
conference
ask me how to select objects in
Photoshop easily and the main front of
his question consisted of how to take
objects like the one I have in this
picture this horse on and get the fine
details of this election like the hair
if anybody's experienced in be a
selection process and photoshop a lot of
times you'll use either the pin tools or
the magic selection tool to try to get
the best selection you can but when hair
comes along like the hair that's on this
horse on it can be nearly impossible to
select isolate every strand
so I just wanted to give you guys a
brief tutorial on how to get the
emphasis on that hair how to how to get
a good selection
now obviously that the general selection
like that the curves and such on the
horse are easy enough
so we're not going to really be focusing
on that as much as the hair I'm in fact
this process does cut out some of this
other stuff but it really makes the hair
pop so i'll show you how all that works
here
I'm now you can see I've got a really
high def image here and this works for
low def images as well I Photoshop has
become more and more sophisticated over
time and it's just amazing what is able
to do these days
so what I went ahead and did was I
loaded this picture of horse and this is
the the picture that my buddy had
actually had me work on with him so I
just wanted to show you guys how I did
it
so what I did was I loaded this up and
you can see I've already got a selection
going on but really all i did was i can
select here
I is I use the lasso tool and I just
dragged around very general selection
not been real sophisticated all I had to
do is really just select that so
I and you don't have to be too detailed
you'll notice that my selection isn't
isn't very close to the horses face or
hair or anything like that just as long
as you kind of isolate the horse from
the rest of the background enough to
make it to make photoshop know what
you're trying to select ok now when
you're done selecting uh there's this
really cool new tool that photoshop
gives us and they have a sophisticated
it since photoshop cs5 came out and I
think photoshop CS 5.5 is actually has
actually got a better version of this
but i'm going to show you what cs5 can
do for you
all right i'm now when you've got this
last all to selected and you've already
made your selection all you have to do
is go up to this
refine edge button now you'll see that
I've actually actually went ahead and
duplicate my layer just in case I screw
anything up or I need to grab any more
details out of the original image is
always good to have a backup
alright so i'm selecting my top layer my
duplicated layer
I'm getting really refine edge and
you'll notice right off the bat that it
already cut this out
this is just a preview hasn't already
cut it out for me it's just a preview of
what it will look like when I refine the
selection zedge all right and what's
really cool is with the click of one
button you can make this image do some
amazing things right off the bat and
you'll notice edge detection edge
detection is a cool new feature that
photoshop past and all you have to do to
make this start working for you right
away is press the radius slider and
bring it up
I'm going to bring it up halfway and you
can see already that is isolated a lot
of the the hair strands
I'm giving us a lot more detail it's not
as sophisticated yet as i'd like to show
you but you can see right off the bat
sliding this up to 50 or thirty-seven
percent 37.5 pixels rather I has
isolated a lot of the strands and
brought out the background
you'll also notice that the hooks which
are i have a white tent to them have
actually
bendy selected that's where r duplicate
layer will come in handy because we'll
be able to extract the hosts on and be
able to apply them properly as opposed
to cutting them out but it's really that
the strands of the hair that you'll be
interested in here so let me see if i
can zoom in here show you exactly what's
going on
I'm going to keep bringing this radius
up and you'll notice that they had that
the background is being extracted
you'll notice that you will lose a
couple of hair strands to cut a little
bit of a little bit of the background is
still showing but as you adjust the edge
these different selections for it is
really really depends on what image
you're using but this refine edge
selection tool has really benefited me
in a lot of different ways
I'm rather than trying to select it all
and you know select the blues and try to
extract though it's really complicated
processes refine edge tool is giving you
the power now
- select things properly all right and
you'll see as i zoom out that the
quality is just amazing
as I just go ahead and pop a couple of
these values up and show you exactly
what's going on here
you can feather it I don't recommend
feathering it as it does bring a lot of
the detail down but you'll notice that
it does add kind of a cool effect to it
but i'm not i'm not a big fan of that
myself but it may work for your image
and i'm just going to keep bringing this
up
all right i got a selection i think it's
gonna work for me let me actually bring
that down just a tad
all right now i'm going to go ahead and
hit OK and you'll notice that my
selection has changed its brought
everything closer and now i can just go
ahead and hit command shift I which is
invert selection and so it's now instead
of selecting a horse
it's selecting the background and when I
hit the backspace button it should
delete my background we actually make
this invisible and give myself a black
background to kind of show what's going
on here
okay i'm going to go ahead and delete
this and put my black in there
ok and so you'll notice that on the
background they're still there's still
some light back there but you'll notice
for the most part the strands have been
isolated and once again you're going to
have to play with the settings to get it
exactly right on
but as you throw this into other
backgrounds like you know a lighter
color such as green you notice that you
can't really tell
and this this will be the case most of
the time but once again just play with
those settings and see what works for
you and if you lose quality in different
areas you can duplicate the layer and
use your eraser tool
I to bring in a lot of the a lot of the
details that you've lost but once again
the strands of hair have been isolated
quite effectively
so this is a tool that i found
beneficial and a lot of different
aspects and I'm just hoping that it
works for you to write
thanks