Cutting out the Background

Cutting out the Background

Photoshop is a powerful tool and a bit like my human brain;  I know how to use only about 10% of it.

Much of this is because there are lots of tools and techniques that I don’t use often enough to remember all the steps required to achieve a certain result.

Clicking the Magic Wand and pressing delete is easy. Some images lend themselves well to the Magnetic Lasso Tool. But there are some images that end up looking like you cut them out with pinking shears no matter how good your Lasso and Magic Wand skills are.

Particularly troublesome are images where you need to cut around animal fur and human hair. The following is a dual tutorial that I found and bookmarked. Rather than using a layer mask, the author uses a colour channel and the burn tool to create a selection that really works well with the right images. Lets go!

http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/handy-techniques-for-cutting-out-hair-in-photoshop