QuickMask

Using a Quick Mask.
In selecting an object that is in many shades of color from a background which is of similar sorts of shades, we could use one of several approaches. For this rose, I think that I would use a Quick Mask. A Quick Mask allows you to paint on your selection (or the masked area.. your choice). Then once you have your selection, you can delete it, recolor it, mask it, or whatever you need to do.

I am going to put a black background with green corners behind my rose, but I'll make the background later. First I'll make my rose selection.

Here's how to do this:

Open the Rose- found in your TEEN folder in the QuickMask folder.
First, double-click the layer in the layers palette so that it becomes a regular layer and not the background. Then choose File -> Save as, and rename your file and save it in psd format. It is always best to keep your original pristine and unmangled.

Then, to enter Quick Mask mode, first double-click your "Edit in Quick Mask mode" button (pictured in green in my screenshot to the right) to check your options. You want it to read "Color indicates Selected Areas."

You can even make the color of your quick mask into the latest fashion color, if you like. (Using a different color can make it easier to see the mask. A time when you might wish to use a different color mask would be.. this example, since the rose and the mask are pretty close in color! I went ahead and used the 50% red, thought, the default.)

Now that you are in quick Mask mode, you can use your painting tools (brush, airbrush, etc.) to paint what is called a "rubylith mask" onto your picture. You are not really painting on the picture, but you are creating a selection. If your rubylith should extend beyond a border, then you can erase it, too! Try this using a hard-edged brush and a soft brush to see the difference in your result.

When you have your mask painted on as you want, you click on the "Exit Quick Mask" button on your toolbar (in red above). This makes the marching ants go around on the part of your image where you painted the rubylith.

(If you end up with the background selected, as i have here to the right, then do Select -> Inverse if you want to convert this to a layer mask as i did in the next step.)

Now that your selection is active, you can do whatever you want to the background. I want to convert this Quick Mask selection to a real layer mask. This way I can preserve the original background should I need to edit the selection later or do something different with the background.

To make your selection into a Layer Mask, with your selection active, click the Add Layer Mask button (here it is green). Et voilà! Masked!

Whatever you have in the layer below will show through. At this point, I clicked the new layer icon, chose black for my foreground colour and then clicked alt-backspace to fill that layer with black.

Should you see that your edge is a little rough or not accurate in some places, you can always edit your layer mask. Just click it in the layers palette, and choose either a white or black brush and edit your troubles away!

I touched a green airbrush to the corners of my black background to get this effect.

Difficult Subjects.
But what about that wispy-haired waif we want to take from a big-city background and place into the forest? Or what about this tree with this threatening sky to the right? Can we make this a pretty day? How can we select something complex like this tree with all that tiny detail?

In Photoshop, there are always at least three ways to do something. Since there is some pronounced contrast in this photo, one way to select the tree from the background is by using a threshold level adjustment.

Here's how I did it:

Open the Tree- Found in your TEEN folder in the QuickMask

If your image is the background layer, double-click it in the layers palette to make it into a regular layer.

Then drag your image to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette to duplicate it. Click on the upper one of these, the new layer, in the layers palette to select it.

Image -> Adjust -> Threshold. Now right-click the layer in the layers palette and name it "Threshold."

When the dialog box comes up, move the slider left and right and watch your image. What you want is for your subject to be black and your background to be white. You will have to go back and forth to get just the right level of detail that you want. Click the Preview box off if you want to remind yourself where your image edges are. When the subject is black and the background is white, hit ok.

So now we have the relatively simple task of selecting just the black tree. Then we are going to use this selection as a pattern to cut the tree out of the original picture!

Choose your magic wand from the toolbox and make sure that contiguous is off. This will enable you to select all of the black pixels whether or not they are contiguous (touching each other). Then set your tolerance to a low number.

Now touch your magic wand to the tree (in the threshold layer.) This will select all the black pixels.

Now we will apply this selection to the duplicate original tree layer.

For bigger image, click here. Photo by permission Lynn Bishop, Canz Designs, ©2001

Your black tree is selected now. Click the eye off in the threshold layer. You should now see your original tree layer with the cloudy background. The original tree has the selection ants going around it.

Now click on the original layer in your layers palette. Click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Et voilà! Now what you did was you added a MASK to this layer. You did not delete the background. So if you wanted to, you could paint on the mask in either black or white to EDIT the part of the tree that is showing. This is the beauty of layer masks!

Now you can put in whatever background you want in the layer underneath the original one. I've made a white -> blue gradient sky layer.

Finally, because the tree was so dark in the original picture, the resulting cutout tree against a summer blue sky is too dark. We can fix that a bit with levels. Image -> Adjust -> Levels .. and then pull the light and medium sliders toward the left till you like your look.

Trouble-shooting.

There was a pretty hard edge around the perimeter of the tree when I did mine. This can lead to an overly crisp and fakey look. as in the shot to the right.	Softening this edge is one use for that layer mask. Click on the layer mask and then do Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and make it just one or 1.5 pixels.	Here is something else that might occur. When you are placing something against a darker background than was there, you can get a whitish fringe around the subject. The same can happen with a dark fringe on a light background. So how do you fix this? One way is to use Layer -> Matting -> Remove white matte (or remove black matte).

Here is another way to use that black silhouette tree that we got from doing the threshold adjustment.