Male: Hello and welcome to our new easydigitals.com video tutorial. Remember, you can get all of our high quality Photoshop and Photoshop Elements templates at easydigitals.com. Just click on the product button and don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter, we give away free templates and tutorials each and every month. Along with product update info and coupons. Okay Kim, what easy tutorial are you going to show us today?
Kim: Today, I’m going to show you how to use extractions to add some nice finishing touches to you’re photos. I’m going to use one of my favorite tools which came out with Photoshop CS3. And it is the quick selection tool. When we’re finished, we’ll have something like this where we’ve extracted a part right here and a part right where the arm is and this ball makes the whole picture almost look 3D.
Let me go ahead and move this out of the way. Template that we’re going to start with, but it could also be like a magazine cover I’m just going to rearrange it here. We’re just going to turn these layers off, a template that could be a poster or a magazine cover. Basically, what I’m going to do is drag my photo into the template and I want to make sure it’s going to go into the right area. So, large photo here and I’m just going to drag it in and I’m going to size it.
I want this arm coming off a little bit and now I have the picture situated where I want it and size the way I want it. So, the first thing I’m going to do is copy it, and in order to extract this ball and put it where I want it. I am going to have to move this, move one of my layer. So, I’m going to come over here, I’m going to turn my bottom layer off and my top layer on select my Move Tool and skip this over until I see that ball.
Now this is the first thing that we’re going to extract and it doesn’t matter that we moved it around. So, I’m going to go ahead and zoom in it. So, I can see what I’m doing and I’m going to come over to my quick selection tool. And if you can’t see it, then you right click until you get to it.
Now, I’m going to choose a large, these are brushes. So, I’m going click my right bracket key to choose a large brush and basically I want – what I’m doing is I’m selecting what I want to keep. So, and as long as you have this auto enhance on, it actually takes a little bit longer but it does a little bit more and you could try to select exactly what you want.
If you are doing some detailed work and you don’t’ really want that on because it takes longer, you can turn that off and then turn it back on when you got to do your fine details. So, I’m just basically selecting the area roughly and then I’m going to go into auto enhance. And I’m going to look at some of these edges and see how I did. Now, when I want to take away an area, I come back in and I’m going to choose my left bracket to make it smaller and I’m going to press my ALT key on the PC and I’m just taking away a little bit of this.
And also, I do have a hard brush here and I’m taking away a little bit more until I get and I see a little bit of grass right here. And then, I’m going to bring in a little bit right here and you just keep going back and forth with this until you get it how you want it and that looks pretty good to me. I’m just going to take this little edge off and then I’m going to click on refine edge.
When you click Default, it shows a white background, if you want to see what other backgrounds look like, like a dark background or the mask then you can press this, but the Default is always white and what you can do is you can move this around and it helps you select and move in on your object. And once you get the radius and the contrast set to where you think it looks pretty good, it’s going to take a little bit more and then, you can come over to smooth and play with this. Sometimes you just take it to the extreme so that you can see what it does and feather. I’m going to take this in and this is what it looks like with the dark a little bit. And I’m pretty happy with that, so I’m just going to leave it. I’m going to go ahead click, okay and it hasn’t really done anything yet. So, what I need to do is make sure that I have my layer selected that I’m working with and click on the Mask Tool and it’s going to mask everything but the ball, the selection.
Now, I turn back on my other layer and I’m going to zoom out and then I can put that ball wherever I want and then if I want it coming out of the frame, I also press my control in my right bracket to move it up and now above the frame. So, another thing you can do is if you have something completely extracted, you can effects to it like you drop a shadow or an outer glow to enhance it. And those are some fun things you can do but I’m going to go ahead and turn that off for now.
You could also come in here since you have a mask and you can fixed up in the areas with you’re brush as long as you’re selecting your mask. The black will cover, so you could just come in here and fix any imperfections that you're not happy with until you get it how you want it or you could bring an area by swapping this and just bring back portions that you want.
Now, I’m going to show you how to do the same thing with his head and his hand. So, let’s go ahead and turn off this word football, let’s turn off this edge. Zoom them in here on his head and we’re just going to take this and we just need to get his head selected out and you can again like I said, you can work on this and put a lot of detail into it or you can just do a quick selection.
And I’m just going to take a little bit out here. You can also use the extract filter which sometimes just does a good job with hair. This is pretty good like if you had a football player and you just wanted to get with the helmet on, then this is really good because you have such a straight edge that you’re working with.
Okay, and then we’re going to come over to his hand and we’re just going to select. I’m going to zoom in here and come back and press my ALT key and I’m going to need to make this brush smaller. So, I’m pressing my left bracket, sometimes I forget which way I’m going.
The minus takes it away just details. And you could do this whole with the whole image and extract your player and it’s actually pretty fast and then when you get to the details it does takes a little bit longer but it’s a pretty fast process, so it’s a really nice tool.
View, fit on screen, okay. Now I’ve got those two areas. So, I’m going to go ahead too my refined edge and it’s – let’s zoom in here and clicking on this zoom tool and I’m going to just look at this. It’s a pretty forgiving tool and you can go back and tweak it, tweak you’re like lets say, let say that I didn’t like this little bump right here. I can just come in here and press my ALT key and just split that out and then go back to my refine, keep working on it, it doesn’t look like I really smooth that out that great.
But, you get the idea here on how it works and it’s a really nice quick tool now I’m going to create a new layer for this. And I’m going to go ahead and click on my mouse tool so you can see my extractions there. So now, I’m going to turn it back on my football and my grungy edge. Fit on screen and also I have to do is move this layer above those. So, I’m selecting my layer and I’m going to press control in my right bracket and move the hand all the way up to the top basically, so it covers everything.
Okay, it looks like I might have a little issue here. So, let’s look that and I looks like I might need to do a little fixing up here. So, I’m going to get my brush and I’m just going to enhance this little area right here. I’m just basically adding to my extracted portion. I didn’t get quite enough extracted. I think this hair is okay though. That area looks good, view, fit on screen.
Male: Hey, that was easy. Thanks for watching. If you have any questions about this tutorial or any of our products, you can always reach us at easydigitals.com have yourself a creative day.
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