Techie Tuesday: Extraction

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Happy New Year! Jen Yurko here with a post for you today πŸ˜€ 2018 went by SO fast – I barely blinked and it was just… over O.o Despite that, I’m looking forward to what 2019 has to offer!

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Here at PBP, we’ve kicked off the year with a brand new look and several new features! If you haven’t taken a look around our new prettified website, I encourage you to do so πŸ™‚ I’m loving our new look! We’re also kicking off the New Year with some brand new features here on our blog, starting with Techie Tuesday!

This week I’m bringing you a brand new tutorial on how to quickly select and extract your subject from your photo. This is the photo I’m starting with LOL! This is my youngest son… he kills me…

I’m writing this tutorial for both Photoshop CC and Photoshop Elements 13. The tools and steps are almost identical.

First duplicate your image and then select the background layer:

With the lasso tool, select your subject… keep as close to the edges as you can, but it doesn’t have to be maxi-perfect:

Right click on your selection and click on fill:

Make sure you have “content-aware” selected in the drop down then click ok

Here’s what you should be looking at now:

Now click on the top layer, your duplicated image and click on your quick selection tool (grouped with the magic wand in PS)

You can find it here in PSE

Select your subject … get as close to on the edges as you can this time. You can swap between the subtract and add quick selection tools to help get all the little details if necessary

When you’re done, in Photoshop, click on the Select and Mask button.

In PSE, you will need to click on the Refine Edge button:

Brush around the edges of your subject (noted here with a red line). Notice I didn’t brush ON the edges but just outside

When you’re finished, for PS users, select the Layer Mask option under the Output drop down and click ok

For PSE users, select the New Layer with Layer Mask option under Output To:

Here’s what you should be looking at now:

You can apply the layer mask by right clicking and click on Apply

Here’s what you get:

Now you can easily scrap your subject without all the hubbub in the background πŸ™‚ Here’s my layout:

I hope you enjoyed today’s Techie Tuesday! If you have any tutorial requests for techniques you’d like to learn or even software that you are having troubles with, let us know!

3 Comments to “Techie Tuesday: Extraction”

Super useful Jen! I know I always struggle with photo extractions. I’ll be bookmarking this for sure! thanks for the help!