How to Remove a Background, Then Add Another - Photoshop CS5

Watch and learn how to remove a background from a picture, then watch and see how you can add your cut-out to another picture and STILL look real!!!!

Please thumbs up for all the work put into this tutorial =)

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Closed Caption:

yeah
hey how's it going there 2 1 this is
bringing pies from take it . com here
with your fantastic and amazing and very
exciting tutorial today and it is
freakin hot in my room
what's with that I don't know what it is
about my room but I just I don't get
good air conditioning in here for one
reason or another and it's pretty
miserable so I'm gonna try and get
through this without dying on ya
and if you're like me and you don't like
it when your room gets ridiculously hot
you should like this video or if you're
just plain awesome like that just like
the video anyway I mean either way like
this video make us feel good and happy
and kind of show everyone else that
these tutorials are amazing
so with that said let's get right into
this tutorial
what I'm going over today has been
requested by quite a few people and the
ironic thing is that I've actually done
a tutorial on this already
it's how to remove a background from
something but it wasn't called that it
was called masking and
I guess people just don't get the hint
so here I am kind of doing a remake sort
of thing but since it's kind of lame to
just do a repeat of something I've
already done
I decided to take this to the next level
so not only are we going to be taking a
picture like this and removing the
background like that
just keeping tricks right there we're
actually going to grab another picture
like this snowy set of trees and we are
going to add Tristan into it like so and
even had a shadow give him some color
correction and just make it look like
he's actually there so yeah that's
that's kind of older is that we're going
to be doing today so i'll just delete
that because we're going to be using
this later and we'll go back here and
turn it back on and wawa we are ready to
start
ok so right now I would very much
recommend that you open up whatever
picture is that you'd like to use to cut
out your background and all that and i
would recommend looking up are masking
tutorial roll fast just to get an idea
of how mass collection all that before
we try and do this because it is a
little bit more in depth
and you know whatever we'll just we'll
just go right into this and see how it
goes
ok so first thing we're going to do is
decide who it is that we're going to cut
out
I've already done that I'm going to cut
out tricks in right here
and so the simplest way to go about
doing this short of tracing out tricks
in entirely
we're going to make this a lot simpler
and we're going to go over here to our
quick selection tool and this tool is
best in photoshop cs5 from what i know
it doesn't work quite as well and cs4
and I don't even know if it exists in
cs3 and c is too so follow along if you
can if not you know you can learn
something new from this anyway
alright so what we're gonna do with this
now that we've got our little tool right
here
we're going to zoom in on a little
starting point I figured I would just go
with the shoes just because they're
pretty simple and i'm going to size up
my tool just because it looks a little
dinky the moment so i'm going to use the
right bracket key to do that or you can
just use a little dealio up here little
size and hardness and all that but you
don't have to mess with that
and by default you should be set to this
little icon right here which is just add
to selection so just make sure with that
as well as I am so to do this is
actually pretty simple
are you going to do is just put your
little tool on the section that you want
to mask out and you're going to click
and drag and just kind of follow along
your the body and it should do its best
to automatically select your person for
you
and so keep in mind this isn't a perfect
tool some you know when it comes to
pictures they're always imperfect and
the tools not perfect either so it's
always going to do a little mess up here
and there like see right there it didn't
get the little shoe laces and all that
but do what you can just kind of go
through and click and drag and the areas
that you want to select and just get the
general idea of what it is you want to
mask out and then when it comes to
smaller areas like this
just go ahead and size down your little
tool by hitting the left bracket key
and there you go it kind of fits the
thumb little bit so just click and drag
that will select for us and we'll just
go along
and so it should automatically just a
just a little bit depending on the the
pixels and all that
so this is basically all you're going to
do is just going to go through try to
add selections as you can
it doesn't have to be you know spot-on
perfect
all I guess you can try it's kind of up
to you but you don't really have to
and then something that you're going to
want to know when it comes to the hair
you don't have to try and get this
spot-on perfect because you're going to
be able to get to that in a little bit
right after this because if you're going
to try and select all this it's going to
end up going haywire at some point and
is going to select all this stuff that
you don't actually want to get so do
what you can just get as much hair as
you can and just call it good
and then I noticed over here that likes
to miss this area so i'm just going to
go through
ok so once you got
most of your person selected with your
quick selection tool
you might want to take a moment and look
through like all the little areas and
such to see if there's something that
you want to fine tune and the best way
in my opinion to fine-tune this is to go
over here and grab your polygonal lasso
tool and then we don't want to do is
just find whatever it is that you're
quick selection tool didn't get and if
you want to add to it
like say i want to add this little
shoelace right here you'll want to hold
the shift key and then just kind of
click and just kind of start clicking
through and selecting the entire shoe
lace and if you mess up with your lasso
tool i found out that you can actually
use the backspace key to kind of undo
that so that's a very handy little be
right there because at one point I
didn't know that
and because of that I hated the
polygonal lasso tool
ok so i got this entire suit shoelace
selected but there's this little area
and hear that I don't want and so to get
rid of that i'm going to hold the Alt
key or the option key if you're on a Mac
and now i'm just gonna select through
that area like so
ok so I've sick
fully removed that area from my
selection and so all you're going to do
is just kind of go through your image
and fine tune it with the polygon lasso
tool as you see fit
ok so I've gone through and fine-tune
this little selection as I felt
necessary i'm not going to get too in
depth with that just because I just
don't want to waste too much time just
kind of making a selection around
something I'm not really planning to
keep and so that means we're ready to
move on to the next step which is to go
to this little refine edge button up
here if you don't see that just make
sure you're on one of these selection
tools like the market to all the lasso
tool the quick selection tool
you know just any of these selection
tools as long as you have one of those
activated you can go to this will refine
edge thing right here
and before you click that i highly
recommend zooming in on wherever we have
a lot of hair like your attraction we've
got all this hair right here so i zoom
in right there and now we'll go ahead
and click the refine edge button and so
now you're going to get this little
refine edge menu and there's a lot to
this and I'm going to cover that
but before we mess with any of these
settings or anything like that
we want to make sure that photoshop
knows that all of this area right here
is part of a very unique selection for
an edge that we need to manipulate or
not really manipulate but just kind of
let photoshop know that there's stuff
here that it needs to decipher whether
or not to keep it in our masks or not
so to do this all we're actually going
to do is just use the default so
although we have going on here and just
kind of click and highlight any bit of
hair that we have that's kind of like on
the edge right here so just select all
that and we'll select this area right
here and we can go just along the edge
just for safekeeping and we'll come all
the way back down and we'll select all
this here right here
and when you let go
it should do a little thinking thing and
then it'll do its best to decipher what
it is that you it wants to keep and what
to which to exclude and obviously he
gets a little bit of the the background
still in there but that's okay because
now we're ready to fine tune this sucker
so i'm going to zoom out a little bit so
get a better look at what we have going
on here
and so the first thing that we noticed
is that we still have that color and
tricks in his hair and so the best way
to get rid of that is to go down here
and activate the decontaminate colors
and so that's automatically just kind of
fix that up just a little bit for us but
we're going to amp up the amount just a
little bit like so and so that all fixed
up a little bit for us and then I
noticed that along his arm and along
other sections it's a little ragged so
we'll go over to the smooth and we'll
add that up to maybe 20 and so that
should smooth it out a little bit for us
and the next thing you notice is that we
have a little bit of an edge on his
elbow
we still have a little bit of his hair
and all that in there and so it's the
kind of help remove that a little bit
we're going to shift the edge down a
little bit and so that all kind of move
it in and it will amp up the contrast
and maybe not so much on the shift edge
and then we're going to amp up a feather
- maybe one pixel and so all together
we're getting something pretty nice but
just to add that final little touch to
it
we're going to turn on the smart radius
and we can change that to one pixel and
so with all those settings change we
have a pretty good-looking mass going on
here
and so there are actually two things
that i forgot to mention one of which is
that we are going to be outputting this
to a new layer with a layer mask and
also if you don't have this black
background that I do
you're just going to go up here to the
View menu
you can just choose the on black it's
got all these other different settings
that you can go for like overlay you can
see how much of this it's selected based
on like the area showing the picture all
that behind it you can do this on white
you know there's just all these
different things that you can use is
based on your personal preference
so now that we've got all this figured
out we'll go ahead and hit ok and there
we go we've got a very nice and very
clean cut out of tristan and something
that you'll notice like in small areas
like the shoelaces down here it actually
cuts out the shoelaces and thankfully we
put this on a layer mask so we can
actually bring those back and the
easiest way that i find to do that is to
go to the band jump layer or wherever it
is that you have as your original and
we'll turn that back on and we'll set
the opacity to maybe eight percent or
something like that and then we'll go to
the layer mask of the cutout version of
tristan and so actually i'm gonna go
ahead and rename that now
brixton every hope and i will just grab
a brush and we'll make sure that it's
small enough so I'll sides that down
with the left bracket key and then we'll
just make our foreground color whites
and i'll zoom in and we're just going to
go ahead and paint in whites on whatever
areas that we want to bring back so i'll
bring in the shoelace and flips my bed
edits and do that I need to make sure
I'm on my actual mask i was actually
drawing whites in on the layer itself
so there we go out much better we'll
bring all this back right here and then
we'll bring back the shoe lace up here
and a little bit more right there and
some more right there
and so this is just the general concept
behind that if you get areas that you
want to go ahead and bring back go and
do that yourself
I'm just going to go ahead and call that
good and so now finally we are ready to
grab the move tool and click and drag
this to whatever picture it is that we
have open
and just bring that on down and so if
you get this little paste profile
mismatch thing just go ahead and hit OK
kind of ignore that doesn't really make
a big difference
and so now we're ready to start
manipulating tricks and so that it
actually looks like he's in this little
picture that we've got here
and so when you're doing that there are
a couple of things that you want to keep
in mind when you're manipulating and
moving and changing this layer up
and so the things that you need to take
into consideration when you're doing
something like this is the size and the
position the lighting and the coloring
and so we're going to focus on the the
first part right now which is the size
and the position and all that and so
obviously this picture of direction is a
little bit too big for this particular
image
so we're going to bring up the transform
tool with ctrl T or command T if you're
on a Mac computer and i'm going to zoom
out and i'm going to click on these
corners while holding alt and shift or
option + shift when you're on a mac and
you're going to size this down to
something that seems like it fits the
the size of the area of where you want
to put it
and since I've already experimented with
this I know some around thirty one
percent or so is actually pretty good
for me and I want this to look like he's
jumping into the air so maybe I'll
position up
and maybe summer just right there
something along those lines and so the
next thing that we need to make sure we
take into consideration is the lighting
and if you pay close enough attention
and if i zoom in you'll see that the
shadows of the snow are on the right
right here
and so that means that the lighting is
coming from the left and go into the
right but for tricks in the picture was
taken with the Sun on the right going
and so the shadows are being cast left
so the shadows a little bit backwards so
just to fix that will right click and
flip them horizontally and then we'll
just kind of tilts them a little bit
this way just to make it look a little
bit more straight up and down
and so now that we've successfully
addressed the whole lighting issue
now that we've got the lighting go in
the right direction and everything is
transformed exactly the way we want it
to
we can go up here and hit the little
check mark and i'm going to move in a
little bit more over here and so one
thing that you're probably going to
notice when you size down and image like
that
I'm going to sew this out by alt
clicking the little eye icon right here
or that's an option click for a mac
usually you're going to get a little bit
of a line somewhere up here
it's a little bit hard for you to see on
my screen I can see it
and so to get rid of that will just go
to our brush tool and we'll make sure
that we're on the mask for it
and i'm just going to size this sucker
up and stop the black and I'm going to
get rid of that line right there
there we go and then there's a little
there's going to be a little bit of a
line on the bottom as well so just get
rid of that and I hope I got that so
we'll just turn on all this again and
now we are set to move on
ok so we're going to need a couple
duplicates of this in order to get the
effect that we want to create so we're
going to go ahead and duplicate the
destruction layer twice by hitting ctrl
J control J again and one of these
copies we are going to rename to motion
blur and we're going to put that under
Tristan and then we are going to name
the second copy
what was it all right we're gonna make
this our shadow and so we're going to
want to flatten these two layers and the
easiest way to do that is to select one
of them and control click the create a
new layer icon and then ctrl click the
motion blur like that so that way
they're both selected and then merge
them together with control e4 command D
and now that's just one flat image and
we'll just do the same thing for the
shuttle air make a new layer underneath
it
select both and merge them together and
so next we're just going to go back to
our motion blur layer right here and
we're going to go to filter blur motion
blur and we're going to set the angle to
90 degrees and we are going to set the
distance - 12
and if you just kind of look around that
just gives it a nice little motion blur
up and down and if you hit ok and you
zoom in you'll see that there's just a
little bit of blur around the edges and
that just gives it the field that he's
actually moving rather than just kind of
floating in the air and then next up
we're going to go over here to the
shadow layer and we're just going to
give that a color overlay
and so we want this to be the same color
or roughly the same color as the other
shadows that are here so we're going to
just click this little color picker over
here and we are going to pick the shadow
color over here and so our goal is
actually to over exaggerate this just a
little bit so we have a little bit more
control when it comes to changing our
passage and all that's a match the the
shadow and all that
so we're going to go down and a little
to the rights and that was just a very
dark grayish blue color and hit ok and
we'll hit OK again
and so now we're going to manipulate
this look like it's more like it's on
the ground and so will bring up the
transformational with ctrl T and we're
going to right click and flip this
vertically and we're going to move this
down here and rotate it a little bit
and so here is the actual tricky part we
want this to look more 3d rather than
just kind of just as it is and so the
easiest way to actually go ahead and do
that is to hold the control key or the
command key if you're on a Mac computer
and we're going to take one of these
points and drag it downwards like so and
we're going to move this layer back up a
little bit and so just kind of use the
ctrl key piece of crap
we're going to use this control key to
just kind of manipulate this like so
and so now if you kind of look at this
box that i manipulated I kind of made it
look like it's a 3d kind of just kind of
a 3d look right there looks more like
it's on the ground but I want to
actually change its just a little bit
more move this little more that way and
can move that over here and that's
actually looking pretty good right there
are just some things you want to keep in
consideration is placement
like I kind of like to keep the the
shadow a little just barely off center
of like that where the feet are supposed
to be so in my opinion that's actually
looking really good right there and
we'll hit the check mark and the next
thing we want to take care of to add to
the realism of this shadow is to add a
layer mask to it and grab our brush tool
with the letter B and will zoom out and
size up our brush with the right bracket
key and we're just going to use our
brush to paint in a little black like so
and so that way it looks like its kind
of fading off a little bit and then
we'll just change the opacity down to
maybe somewhere in the twenty thirty
percent Sharia and obviously shadows are
not quite so crisp so we'll go ahead and
add a blur Gaussian blur and I
accidentally still had the thumbnail for
the mess like that so go back to the
actual thumbnail and now will add the
modular and so I'm just going to go
ahead and stick with the six or seven
pixel blur
you can
and do whatever the heck you want for
that and if you notice if we all click
this
oops not all click shift click to turn
that off the mask on and off
you'll notice that the max that we added
earlier kind of helps to add to the
realism by making this fade out a little
bit as it gets a little further away
from the body and so let's see we've
accomplished the position and lighting a
little bit and actually now that I think
about it there's a little bit more that
we need to change about the lighting
if you've noticed the lighting on tricks
in is a little harsh
in comparison with everything around him
so what we're going to do is go to
tricks in his lair and we are going to
grab the burn tool and we're going to
make sure that we're set to the
highlights with an explosion of around
twenty or thirty percent or so around
there and so we're just going to zoom in
and we're going to use this burn tool on
anything that's really bright so maybe
this little section on the shirt and
then tricks in his face in his ear and
then on his hand and arm and on his
other hand and arm and so just to show
you the little before and after on dual
control alt Z and do that a couple times
and so if you do a little before and
after
you'll see that they actually really
does damp in those highlights on those
areas that we burned and so now it
actually looks a little bit more
convincing that is there because the
lighting is not quite so intense and so
finally the last thing that we need to
take care of is the coloring and that's
actually a pretty simple will just make
sure that we have the trickster layer
selected and we'll go to our adjustments
if you don't have those just go to the
window adjustments like so and then
we're going to add a color balance and
this is going to be different for
whatever picture it is I mean for all I
know your picture is already perfect in
terms of color and all that so you don't
even have to do this but Eli's a little
bit or not Eli Tristan is a little bit
to read for this blue picture
so in the mid tones we're going to
change this first slider more to the shy
and and I didn't for her I didn't
remember to clip that so before you
actually do that go to this little icon
and give that a click and that will make
sure that it's just affecting the layer
below it which in this case is the
traction layer so anyway back to what we
were doing
I amped up the Cheyennes and we're also
going to amp up the blues
just a little bit like so and then maybe
add just to barely hit the green in
there
okay maybe we'll screw the green ok
much better and so just to make sure
that everything is getting that little
bluish hue to it will go to the
highlights and will barely change those
to the Cheyenne and the blue and so if
you do a little before and after you'll
see that this looks a lot more blue in
fact it's a little might be a little bit
too blue will make it a little more
Cheyenne
we're just kind of missed this little
bit and whatever you get the you get the
general concept i'm not going to spend a
lot of time miss with this because it's
really pointless because i'm going to
delete this later
alright so that's all there is to this
particular tutorial
I hope you learned something new from
this it's definitely something pretty
cool too
to do if you do it right you should
definitely experiment with this and just
seeds if you can get an effect that you
like and hopefully this was a useful
tutorial for you if you haven't seen
last week's tutorial you should go check
that out it's really neat tutorial i'm
sure a lot of people would learn
something from it and also if you like
our tutorials and you want to will be
part of the old tutorial discussion all
that we do have requests on our youtube
channel and also we have a facebook page
which you should go check out and if you
have any questions post them in the
comments below i'll be sure to help out
as best I can
and so with all that said i will go
ahead and call it an end for this
tutorial and i'll see you next time
yeah