2 Magic Sliders for Fast Smooth Selections in Photoshop CC

hi there this is animation today I'm going to show you do magic sliders to make smooth and sharp selections very very quickly in Photoshop so without any further ado let's get started welcome to the world of Photoshop and it comes to making quick selections in Photoshop really quick selections especially using the quick selection tool or the magic wand tool the selections are pretty jagged right now or we mean by that let's go ahead and use the quick selection tool select that and make a selection of this pencil all right very easy to do make a very quick selection just painting on the pencil as easy as that let's zoom in quite a bit and let's paint on the tip now as we reach the tip we are making the brush eyes smaller how do we do that hold the alt or option the right mouse button drag it to the left to make it smaller drag it to the right to make it bigger right make it a little smaller so let's zoom in and let's select the tip properly now when we select the tip we might select a little extra as you can see over here so when you select extra using the quick selection tool you know what to do hold the alt and when you do hold the alt or option see it changes to minus which means it will subtract from the selection as you paint so now if you paint it will subtract from it which means we are saying to Photoshop we don't want these areas we painted a little extra let's go back ctrl or command Z do that again like so let's see it's pretty good let's zoom in and let's try to erase this particular area it's not a pretty good job we can always go ahead and repair that using the brush tool and let's select some extra areas which it has not selected over here pretty good let's see this area's remaining now it isn't a pretty good job and pretty good selection but have a look if we go ahead and create a mask out of this by clicking on the mask button it's looking pretty good but if you put it in a black background let's go ahead and create a solid color adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose solid color and let's choose black and put it behind this layer now it still is looking pretty good but if he zoom in have a look at the edge it's very jagged it's not looking natural so here's what you can do here the magic sliders come in the rescue select the mask of this one the pencil one and you can go to selected masks now there are a couple of ways of going inside of selected masks you can always go ahead and click here or inside the properties panel if you cannot see the properties panel go to windows and make sure properties is checked now once the properties is checked you can just go ahead and click here or you can also double click over here if you have set it to selected masks so let's go ahead and click on select and mask anywhere now here the magic sliders come into view the first one is smooth if you go ahead this is not the actual magic setter but it does a pretty good job of refining the edges so increase the smooth to the point where the jaggedness is gone 6 is pretty much fine even I think you would play a pretty good job but if you want to remove all the bumps then you can increase but if you want to keep the bumps just keep a lower value but as you can see I'll choose somewhere around say 8 that's very fine now here the magic starts let's go ahead and increase the feather now you might think hey we won't sharp edges we don't want feather but have a look increase the feather to the point where everything looks even okay now feather is like blur for selections now everything looks pretty even pretty nice now as you can see a little bit more extra is selected don't worry about that just make sure everything is pretty even when there is everything even just increase the contrast have a look what happens when you do that the selection becomes sharp doesn't it now if you think it's selecting a little extra you can always go ahead and shift the edge inside if you want to shift the edge inside take it to the left like that but we don't want to do it so much we want to do it just a little like that see it's selecting a little extra over there increase the contrast even more for a sharper edge now you can always go ahead and clear this out very quickly very nicely later but once you're satisfied with this hit okay now have a look at it it's pretty good pretty damn nice now if you want to repair it take the brush you can always take the brush make the size a little smaller and then just like that make sure the foreground color is white remember what's the concept of mask white other areas which show up black are the areas which hide so if I just show you the mask by holding the alt or option and click on in here see this area is white which means the pencil is showing up the background is black which means it's hiding so if I hold the alt or option click on it again as you can see so we're gonna bring some of the areas back by making sure the foreground color is white and then just paint in like that if you want to make sure you're painting in straight lines here's what you can do just click once over there dab once just like that hold the shift key and that once over here that way you will paint a straight line you can try it it's a pretty cool trick works amazingly like that but as you can see as selecting a little extra by doing that and when you do that when you want straight edges but there is a little white over there here's what you can do let me give you one more tip okay choose black paint once and paint now it's straight now as you can see there's a white edge over there how do we reduce it create a new layer select the clone stamp - okay now what you can do you can sample this area and paint over here but if you do that it will just take outside take it outside of the edge so you can clip this layer to this one how do we do that again hold the alter option click on the line between these two less and as you can see the icon has changed to a square with an arrow just do that and voila whatever you do will be clipped will be limited to this Spencer okay sample this and paint on this area sample this be in this area now that has taken care of sample this and let's take care of that area and you have a sharp selection of this pencil now you might have to take a sample from over here and then paint and you get the whole idea how this kind of works before after so this kind of fills in if you think it's too much you can always go ahead and decrease the opacity of this thing so this these are very my new things that you can do to get your selection look very right you can do this here as well to really go ahead and make a perfect selection of the pencil if you zoom out as you can see very perfect selection you can use it in an advertisement so those are the two magic sliders feather and contrast along with smooth just to sum it up first of all make a selection using the quick selection tool or the magic wand tool whatever is your favorite once you make a selection create a mask out of it then end a selected mask once you enter selected masks you will find a slider called smooth increase the smooth slider to the point that you think where the jagged lines are gone if you want to remove the bumps increase it even more then increase the feather increase the feather to the point where everything is even to the point what you desire once it is even don't worry about the edges so much increase the contrast this will sharpen the edges then you can shift the edge if it selects a little extra or if it selects a little less you can shift the edge to the right accordingly and then hit okay then you can improve the selection using the clone stamp tool or whatever you like and you know the rest so that's pretty much it for this video I hope this video helped you and if it did make sure you give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss a thing I'll see you guys when I expand till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you [Music] [Applause]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 4,310,136

Rating: 4.9240899 out of 5

Keywords: photoshop smooth jagged edges, refine edges, anti aliasing, 2 magic sliders, select and mask, photoshop tips and tricks, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: oHfGDfbXdT4

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ArmlessAmbidextrian]

Was getting frustrated with 'smooth selection' just yesterday, so thanks for this!

[u/Kthulu666]

This reminds me of something my After Effects professor said, "Don't just turn in a tutorial you followed. I watch them too, because you never know when you'll pick up some new trick."

Apparently he was onto something because I didn't know this technique in PS either, though it feels like I should've.

[u/Fit-Spinach-8387]

PixImperferfect !💯💯💯

[u/etidie83]

Why not just use the pen tool to create your selection? Would be faster and probably even cleaner than this.

[u/LaceTheSpaceRace]

Tutorial could be 5 seconds but instead it's 8 minutes. If someone is looking how to make a smooth selection, you can assume they already know everything else up until that point. I hate tutorials where the majority of the video is not explaining the thing you went there for.

[u/Rraai]

Additional tips

You can refine the mask without leaving the selection and mask window. The lassos and different brush types are in the top left side and you can change the different view options (black background, white background, white selection, etc) in the top right side.

[u/winst2020]

Its good for masking objects but when doing this on person with hair it really doesn't do the job so a recommend other solutions like for example try to use the second brush in masking menu or try to use color range when the background is mostly solid color

[u/thenewyorkoffice]

This feature wasn't always available, it was originally Refine Edge in early versions of PS CC, so after 2013. Then it changed around 2015 to what it is today. If you hold shift and go Select>Select and Mask... you can get the old Refine Mask dialog (with a mask selected).

[u/theparrotofdoom]

Or, you know, pen tool.