TUTORIAL - Photoshop - Cutting out objects 2/Selecting

Photoshop[2] - Cutting out objects 2/Selecting

This is a second tutorial thread on other ways to cut items from a picture in order to make use of them in another image or document. It is also a tutorial about SELECTING things which is a powerful technique to get right and will help when it comes to learning about other techniques such as masking later.

As I stated in part 1 of this tutorial there are several ways to cut objects and people from pictures. I am demonstrating here a few more ways using simple objects.

Example picture 1



Example picture 2


I am going to split up this tutorial into a number of small parts using different methods and techniques over the next few days (this also avoids the 6 image rule).

Before you use these tips have a look at the previous thread as I will not explain things in here if they have already been explained (this is in order to make it easier to follow).

The first mini tutorial is coming straight away with a few more coming shortly.

1 - Cutting objects out of a single colour background using "SELECT>COLOUR RANGE" part 1. [6/1/10]

2 - Cutting objects out of a single colour background using "SELECT>COLOUR RANGE" part 2. [6/1/10]

3 - Cutting a round/oval object out such as a wheel. [6/1/10]

4 - Using a selection - Colour replacement brush.




If you are a mac user and found this tutorial useful check out the main MacOS tricks and tips.

1 - Cutting objects out of a single colour background using "SELECT>COLOUR RANGE" part 1.

Right first off we are going to look at cutting the strawberry out using the rather nifty "SELECT COLOUR RANGE…" routine.



Right this is a nice simple one, the strawberry is on a white background and contains no white of its own. This is an ideal candidate for this technique.

First turn the layer into a normal layer (see 1st tutorial).

Click menu item SELECT >> COLOUR RANGE…



You will see a virtually black box and a number of options.

For this cut the white is so different that we can select it very easily, just move the mouse pointer over to the image where it will change into an ink dropper then click on the white area.



Now you can slide the "Fuzziness" control up and down and this will adjust how close colours need to be to the selected colour to be selected.

Now click OK and you will see that the white area is selected. You can invert the selection by clicking on the "invert" option should you want to simply select the strawberry.

Now by selecting a large eraser you can simply run around the object and cut it out in seconds.



Using the blue background layer idea from the previous tutorial we can see that the cut has been made but there is a little white bit running around the edge.



No problem……

We need to step backwards a little and refine our original selection.

Use the HISTORY PALETTE and click on fourth option "Colour Range"



Now we can need to invert the selection which will select just the strawberry rather than the background.

Click menu item SELECT >> INVERSE

Now we have the strawberry selected we can shrink the selection by a small amount in order to leave the white halo.

continued…

Click menu item SELECT >> REFINE EDGE



Click on the option PREVIEW

Click on the first on the five similar shapes



This shows the marching ants around your picture, now slide the CONTRACT/EXPAND slider downwards until the ants are JUST inside your shape.



Right thats it



Now click on OK

Right now we need to reverse the inverting we did before so…

Click menu item SELECT >> INVERSE

We can then erase the background again. Sometimes you might need to run through that a few times especially whilst getting used to it.

2 - Cutting objects out of a single colour background using "SELECT>COLOUR RANGE" part 2.

Right now lets do the same thing with the green box.



Well we could do this the same way but we would have to be careful of the white bits inside the image and whilst zooming around with the eraser we would have to make sure that we did not get those bits but this is an exercise rather than an example of the easiest way so here we go….

THIS REALLY IS NOT THE BEST WAY TO DO THIS !!!!

First of all start by turning the layer into a normal layer (as per part 1)



What we are going to do is select the box by selecting the colours in the box. This is useful wear you have an item of varying shades on a background of varying shades but we will use the box anyway.

Now this time click on the outer part of the green box



Now hold down the [SHIFT] key and select more parts of the green in the box, your will see the white area changing as these colours are added.



Keep going and select the orange and blue bits and you will want to reduce the "Fuzziness" slider to maybe 10 or the background will be selected in grey when you reach the lighter parts.

We are not trying to select EVERY part but make sure that the edges of the item are selected as a minimum.



Now click OK



to be continued ….

…. continued

Right we can now see the box with the marching ants but there are lots of bits inside the box which are not selected.

We can pick these up with the quick selection tool (the reality is that we could have just used this tool from the beginning but then you wouldn't have learned as much about colour selection!)

So select the "QUICK SELECTION TOOL"



and now we need to make the tool additive, so click on the "+" for the tool near the top toolbar.



Now move around the box clicking on the marching ant sections and you should see that they disappear into the selected box area.



Once you have all of them you can see that the only thing selected is the box. Again as in part 1 you can use REFINE EDGE and CONTRACT to make sure you do not have a halo.

This time I am going to show you how to cut the object out in one go.

RIGHT CLICK over the image and select "LAYER VIA CUT"



You can now see that there are two layers and I have cut the object out into a new layer of its own.

You could now delete the original layer leaving just layer 1

I have tried to demonstrate a number of feature to make selecting and cutting easier. Hope people find this interesting and useful.

3 - Cutting out round/oval objects using the circular tool.

Right for this example we are going to use two car pictures and create cut out wheels from them.

Example image 1 (courtesy of northstar100



Example image 2 (courtesy of seventythree


Well we could just cut them out using one of the techniques that we have already used but wheels have one particular feature, they are round!! Being round means that you need to treat them specially because if you try and cut them out using an eraser it just is not going to look very convincing.

You could use this to change the wheels on a car to see what it might look like or something similar.

Anyway on to the lesson…..

We sill start with the easier of the two, the example from northstar100 (example 1)

Right as with all lessons load the image into Photoshop and turn the layer into a normal layer.

The tool we are going to use is the Elliptical tool marque and this is hidden under the rectangular marque tool.

Look for this in the tool bar



Right click it and select the elliptical tool marque.



This will now replace the rectangular one in your toolbar (until you select the rectangular one the same way or re-start).

Right now we have the elliptical tool selected we can click on the image and select the wheel.

There are two ways of using this tool, most shape marques start at the top left corner but this is rather difficult to judge with a circle so Adobe have given the ellipse tool a special feature. When you click on the image and drag out it will work like a normal selector and pull out a circle BUT if you press the [ALT] key just after clicking the mouse button the circle grow from that centre point.

As it is also difficult to locate the centre you can move the entire selection area by pressing the [SPACE] and moving the mouse.

So lets give it a try and select just the wheel.



Take your time and keep using the [SPACE] bar as you stretch and shrink the selected are till you get exactly what you want.

Right now we have the wheel selected I am going to COPY in to a new layer.

RIGHT CLICK on the selected area and select LAYER VIA COPY.

continued…

The circle mark has a few more surprises and features.

We are now going to select JUST the tyre.

Clear the current selection and select the entire wheel and tyre.



Now we want to REMOVE the wheel from the selection.

To SUBTRACT a selection we press [ALT] BEFORE clicking the mouse (remember pressing ALT afterwards changes to draw from the centre)



Now we can do the same and create another layer just with the tyre.



Right now click on the little eye next to the layer "Background copy" and the background will disappear.





No we can select the MOVE tool



to be continued….

continued….

Now we can move the wheel and tyre separately.

Click on the layer containing the tyre.

If you want you can even name the layers, double click on the text "layer 2" and change this to tyre.



Back to the MOVE tool lets just move the wheel.



I appreciate that this lesson has not really gone anywhere and you may not feel it has covered much ground but have a play and try using example 2 which should be a little more difficult.

Learning how to use all the selection marques, layers, cutting etc is the basis of all Photoshop trickery.

For more accurate positioning you can use the arrow keys to move the selection and if you also hold the [SHIFT] key whilst pressing the arrow key the selection will move 10 pixels instead.

4 - Using a selection - Colour replacement brush.

We have been learning about making selection and cutting objects out but lets look at a use of making a selection.

Lets have a blue strawberry

Right lets load up the strawberry, convert to a normal layer, delete the background and select just the red part.



Now we need to select the colour replacement brush which is hidden away under the normal brush.

So locate the normal brush.



RIGHT CLICK on the normal brush and select the colour replacement



Right with the red part of the strawberry selected we can now paint it blue Click on the colour selector and select a nice blue colour.

The difference with this brush is that it leaves the texture the same so you could use it to change the colour of clothing, paint tyres white or create martian fruit.

Fixed problems with images following moving to one.com