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Adobe Photoshop Selection Tools

Lesson 4 from: Getting Started with Adobe Photoshop

Matt Kloskowski

Adobe Photoshop Selection Tools

Lesson 4 from: Getting Started with Adobe Photoshop

Matt Kloskowski

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Lesson Info

4. Adobe Photoshop Selection Tools

Lesson Info

Adobe Photoshop Selection Tools

One of things that you're going to notice weakened do that photo shop doesn't really have built in is effects all right effects are probably t me effects become about our style right whether it's going to be a film look or a grunge loker detailed or a contrast look I think everybody kind of starts to develop their style for their photo um photoshopped doesn't really have built in effects so if you want to add an effect to it a lot of people use plug ins I just want to show you one here if you go in they're here to the file menu you go down here to automate the one that I use is from perfect effects and if you go inside and there I had somebody come up there we were talking about the precepts and everything so there's a time a free sets inside a perfect effect that's essentially what it is is it's effects so if you go into the presets section um I'm going your hipster let's see here about so there you go so take a look because I could tell you what it just did with the glow in the contr...

ast and the color tony and all those different things do you know how many layers and blend modes we have to use and photoshopped to get us there it za lot so when it becomes about the style to me most people turn to some type of plugging, so whatever plugging it is, I use perfect effects personally, but I get that style in just seconds if you look at I mean there's a ton of them in here so there's a whole, you know, if you're like the matt look is very popular, so you see kind of give you some previous, but I mean, you have a style in in a second, so right? As much as it is about knowing photos show you get no points, we're doing it the hard way. You get zero extra points for doing it the hard way other than you sit in front of your computer longer so no points for doing it the hard way. So when it comes to this stuff I know there's a lot of purists out there like, oh, no, I got to do with my myself. Fine if you want if you want to be the purest you can if you want to do with the quick, easy way, this is a great one. Moving on selections thiss one of my favorites, so selections we saw earlier there's a couple different selection tools rectangular, elliptical marquis, you've got your lasso tools again, I think the one that you're going to go to the most is going to be this quick selection tool so I mean, I know and hopefully I know this is a beginner's class but hopefully I don't have to explain to the elliptical marquis tool makes an ellipse you get that right? So if that's the shapes election you want go for but to me I want to I want to fast forward through all the stuff to the one I think you're going to use the quick selection tool the way the quick selection tool works is you just you just basically paint it's like a brush you paint a selection onto something all right, I'm gonna show you guys the the worst named and most powerful button inside of photo shop it's called refine edge um people ask me all the time you know what plug in do I use for selection guys I work for a company that makes a selection plug in ok? And I'm going to tell you really some of the best selections that I see are are still right here the plug ins they all have their place because the selections work if you're going to add effects and you wanted to remove it from trees and stuff, those selection tools are great but if you have photoshopped you've got really good selection technology refining it just happens to be named horribly all right you would never like this one this one I'll show you in a second this will flawlessly select hair and I don't know why it's not called the hare selection tool? Yeah, even if even if they give me another button that does the same thing called hair selection. Okay, but refine edge and what it does is it's got a couple of different views here. You've got on black, I could view it on white. I like the black and white view just because I can kind of get a fuel for what it's doing to the edges here, but in a case like this, all I'm going to do is increase the radius look at what it does is they increase the radius, see how it brings in the edges, kind of feathers him a little bit because I don't want to edge around there, the there there is texture around the bird, I want to retain some of that texture, so I kind of just increased the rate is keeping you don't want it to be like that where? Give a second, but you don't want that because that's that's not what you just want to make sure you can just see a little bit of feathering around those edges it's not even really visible, but from here now it can make an adjustment so unimportant thing about selections, one of the reasons why we have a selection is because we want to refine our adjustment to an area up until now, we've kind of just been when we use the levels adjustment, we adjust the whole air right when we you screen and multiply, we were adjusting the whole layer selections allow you to refine it to just the selection, so if I go over here to my levels adjustment and maybe move that middle slider brightened a little bit. Another little tip for you here is see that middle eyedropper the grey one that one the great eye dropper if you click it on something gray in the photo, it'll help color corrector image so the bird here is in shadow owns what happens like when you're in sunlight and you take a picture of somebody in a shadow the's a look blue all right, so if you just click, see how made a little bit warmer zoom in a little bit just add a little bit of warmth there that middle gray slider so now, just with a quick selection that's what I did, I didn't have to do any refined brushing after you make my breasts small and paint around the edges, I'm just able to bring the bird out a little bit and it's a live adjustment member levels all these adjustment layers that we have over here there live so I can make it change it reduced capacity do anything I want so that's the basics of selections I'm going to jump right in because I think you're ready for uh I jumped right into two hair I think I think at the end of the day nobody ever says I want to slept a perfectly rectangle object and move it to another image and everything goes great, right? I mean, no object is ever perfect so to me the holy grail of selection his hair so let's just let's go straight there so I'm gonna open up two images I got this woman and we have a background so first things first let's go ahead and let's get the woman over into the new background so I said I wasn't gonna go the main copy paste okay? She looks a little bit big for the background so let's go to free transform edit where to go go to the image menu by the way the image menu releases a secret option in the edit menu called free transform or unesco the edit menu first I forgot where it wass I tried to play that off it wasn't working. So for all of you watching out there don't go to the image menu first it was just me forgetting um if you hold down the edges here let's just move her into place ballpark I think she'll be pretty good there all right? So let's grab our quick selection tool and I'm going to make a selection all right what I would say is spend a minute or two here getting the selection good all right so zoom in on the photo use your zoom tool or commander control plus minus spend a minute or two and just try to get all the edges because it'll just save you from having to do it later okay all right so I think we got everything we need obviously way got problems appear in the hair ok. So let's go to what's the worst name tool or finance this should be called the hair selection tool and I can view it on different backgrounds remember we could viewed on black aiken viewed on white it was viewed on white for now and in the refined edge tool number look how jaggi her hair looks there's a little brush over here all right? You just take this brush and paint basically scribble you don't have to do with any sort of order ready just in case you forgot what it looked like to start with there's a handy little button for me to click show original look at that see what I mean about having really good selections inside of photo shop so that's what we started with and by just haphazardly brushing along the edge that's what we get okay, so uh common question to this is does the person have to be on a contrast a background like that? It sure as heck helps all right, I can tell you that if you put me in front of that sign that that dark wall with my dark hair and you take a picture and you want to select me off of that background you would have a heck of a time in the places where that there's no photo shop tip in the world that I can give you so the best tip that I can give you is set yourself up right from the start and take the picture that way ok there's no tip in the world that's going to make it easier if the detail and the contrast isn't there there's nothing you can do to make it there um I'm gonna click ok here and so now we have her selected little trip so layer masks right? I'd want toe non destructively hide the background layer a little tip for you is if you have a selection already and you add a layer mask whatever selected stays easy way to remember right? I have a selection that means that's what's important to me and I click on the layer mask icon whatever selected stays um I'm gonna undo this for a second. I'm gonna show you a little tip though because this will happen uh let's go add the layer mask and what you're going to see is you're going to see a tiny little fringe cassidy around there and see it right there c o right there okay that's the telltale sign that's somebody's composited an image is the french so I'm gonna show you a way around him instead of adding the layer mask so I'm going to go against everything I've said so far number I said working on destructively I'm now taking that back they're going to be times they're going to be times where you can't work non destructively this is one of those things is I have a selection if I just do edit copy and then paste what it did is it copied her off of that background and then just pasted her upon another layer what's the difference with this layer it doesn't have the layer masking it wasn't nondestructive I don't I couldn't go back if I wanted to but I knowingly accept this challenge because I need to fix that friends in the way I'm going to show you to fix the fringe through this is really the only way you can do it so I still have that layer there I just hide it but what I did is I just took her off I just physically took her off of her background put her on to a new layer and if you go appear to know I'm going to zoom in because you gotta watch it happen all right zoom in here if you go up here to the later menu and go down to matting and choose d fringe and pick one pixel. See that layer matting de fringe one pixel gone rather than you take in the eraser tool and going with the tiny, tiny little brush it gets rid of that tiny little friends all around there. You have a question I dio yes when you made this selection and initially and you click the refined edge button. What happens when you the other tools that are in there, the little piece down there that's his shift edge? Okay, so the question is, when I made this selection, I went in to refine edge and there are all these other sliders down here. Um, thes they're sliders. I didn't tell mom about yet, you know what it is? I actually I can honestly tell you I really would ever tell mom about those lives because I really using myself I know shift edge you're thinking well, maybe that friends I could have shifted it in and out, but the sliders really don't work very well. So you know, shift edge will do that it'll take your selection that will shift it in or shifted out there's a smoothing there's, a feathering, but honestly, the way that I did it is probably one hundred percent on time the way that I rarely get into those sliders down there

Class Materials

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Quick Reference Guide

Ratings and Reviews

Eugenia Van Bremen
 

I am a beginner, but I've also watched the Adobe Basics Getting Started in Photoshop videos as well as started watching some of the Ben Wilmore videos on Creative Live (and watched a bunch of beginning videos on YouTube). So I'm just starting out, but I've still gotten a decent foundation of the most basic elements of Photoshop. Despite already watching (and taking notes of all the major & most useful details) all those videos, I still found shortcuts that weren't mentioned in any of those other videos, even the ones that covered the exact same material Matt covered (And yes, there was some things he didn't mention that other videos did; so far everything I watched gave me some new learning). I watched mostly on 1.25 or 1.5 speed since I did already have some basic learning & then slowed it down or paused to take notes when he got to some new stuff. It was definitely worth the time investment to learn about the hot key tips he has sprinkled in as well as the Camera Raw filter within Photoshop, which I haven't heard of before. My only complaint isn't about the course itself, but it's a general call-out that I've found deeply frustrating when watching Photoshop & Illustrator tutorials: As the versions are updated, a fair number of the tools change location. For instance, in the Camera Raw part, the location of the toolbar with the "visualize spots" box is totally different. It took several google searches and about 20 mins to figure out where to find that valuable box on the new set up. I really wish Creative Live with create a little compendium that updates the location of tools when a program updates. It would save a lot of headaches. But that's not Matt's fault and his class was overall fantastic. I'll definitely be watching more of them.

user 73eb77
 

Great class. I wish there was more videos but okay for a beginners class. I think Matt is great. I've been following him for awhile on FB and YouTube. I was happy I got to watch him teach, great instructor.

a Creativelive Student
 

I have been sitting on this class for MONTHS being so intimidated by photoshop but i totally took the plunge and im so glad i did! Matt is an amazing instructor - Clear and to the point. Also entertaining! Cant wait to watch another class by matt. I learnt alot! Thanks CL :)

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