How to Select ANYTHING in Photoshop

hey guys can you get some chips what should I do with this and now what ever you need to do by myself there's guards [Music] hey guys it's nemanja and welcome to another fun episode this episode is really important because today I will show you how to select anything in Photoshop and for that we will use few different selection tools and selection methods because unfortunately we don't have one tool to rule them all well that would be really really great to have only one - to make a perfect selection but we are not there yet maybe one day who knows and for now in some situation we can use just one selection tool to create a perfect selection but sometimes we need to use combination of two or more selection tools and methods to create a perfect selection and after that we can extract the model or the object out of the background change the background or use adjustment layers to make some needed adjustment just to that selection and so on and so on so without further ado let's jump straight into Photoshop and Ladd's the fun begin alright guys this is our first image for today and I will start this episode with the first tool on a tool palette here that we can use for selection that's rectangular marquee tool if you press and hold here we will have elliptical marquee tool and then single row or single column marquee tool so those two are rarely rarely used but I will go with rectangular marquee tool so it's really straightforward just create any kind of rectangular shape or if you want square shape you need to press and hold shift it will create a square shape and that's it now you can do with this selection whatever you want it's the same with elliptical marquee tool you can create ellipse with the spacebar you can move this ellipse all around and with the shift key you can make a perfect circle bigger or smaller and again with spacebar you can move that circuit over everyone for example I want it right here and then I want to change the color of this portion into some other color I can use hue and saturation adjustment layer and just change the color right here into something else and that's it we can use those two tools really straightforward and there is no need for other explanation here right the next selection tool is lasso tool lasso tool you can press L on a keyboard to go quickly to lasso tool or just go here to a tool pallet go to lasso tool and if you press a hole right here you will have polygonal and magnetic lasso tool as other options we will go through those two a little bit later let's start with regular lasso tool this is basically a freehand selection tool so you can really easily create any kind selection that's it and then do with this whatever you want this is not a precise way to select things in Photoshop but it is really good way for example if I want to get rid of those dice here I will just go quickly around them press shift backspace go to fill content-aware fill press okay and that's it I'm done lasso tool is really the fastest way to do that okay another selection tool here is polygon lasso tool this tool is really great if you have some straight line objects like those cardboard figures to select because polygonal lasso tool will create only a straight line and that's it and you can use it to select some things like houses I don't know this cardboard fears and so on and so let me show just go click click click this is not so precise right now because I'm rushing this just for this time sake of this tutorial but this is the point you can really easily and really precise to do that you can zoom damage a little bit if you want and you can finish this really quickly all right and now when I finish with this selection I can press ctrl command J maybe create duplicate of this make it smaller and put it I don't know right here or I can put it he's had to sit right here right not right a lot of possibilities so I will delete this guy and let me show one rating between regular lasso tool and polygon lasso tool that's the Alt key if you go to polygon lasso tool and just create any kind of polygonal shape and then press and hold Alt key you will quickly go to regular lasso tool and create other shapes and then you can release it and continue with polygonal lasso tool like this right and the same with the regular lasso tool if you create any kind of freehand shape like this and press and hold alt key it will straight start to behave as a polygonal lasso tool and that's it right that's really handy to know sometimes all right guys now let me show you the magnetic lasso tool to be perfectly honest with you guys I rarely almost never use this tool as a selection method but I will show you to know that this is an option too alright let's go to a lasso tool press and hold and choose magnetic lasso tool as you can see I have a little magnet icon and the polygonal lasso tool icon and now when I press and drag just drag it will automatically try to snap to the edges of the subject or the object that I'm trying to select if you go a little bit off it will still try to snap to that edge but if you go a little bit more it will make mistake like this and don't worry if you create a mistake like this you can just press Delete key once twice and go back and continue your selection this is sometimes really handy but as I already told you guys I really rarely basically never use this tool but just to know this is an option as you can see I missed one part but I'll not go and correct this and we are done again we have selection we can do with this selection whatever we want and that's how you can use the magnetic lasso tool right the next tool is one of the oldest Photoshop selection tools and that's the magic one tool or just magic wand and that tool will create selections based on the colors and tones and it will do its own magic sometimes really really fast and easy let me show you how we can use it right let's choose the method - you can press W on a keyboard and if you're not seeing a magic wand tool that's because it's sharing the same spot here and tool palette where the quick selection tool is just press and hold on the pick selection and you will see magic wand and if you want to change the quick selection again just press the hold and change on a quick selection all right and now we have a different icon and we have a tool that looks like a magician's magic wand right and we have few options right here Tom first we have a sample size that's basically size of the sample size of the area where the magic wand to will a sample tone from so now it's set to point sample that means that it will only sample the tone from one point from one pixel if I go and choose 3 by 3 or 30 by 30 and so on and so on it will make an area basically square of 31 by 31 pixel and it will choose a where each tone from that area and it will make a selection base of that stone so that means now if I choose Point sample and select this black color it will select only black tones on the image and if I switch that to 31 by 31 disa like this by pressing ctrl + D and now select the same black area it will select much bigger area because it will make an average tone from that 31 by 31 square size and it will make selection based on that stone right and we have tolerance here let's go back to point sample tolerance is basically how the tool will beat tolerance to a tones so if the tolerance is set to zero and I click on this stone right here it will try to try to select basically same tone that I sample from if I boost the tolerance a little bit more and select again from this this stone it will have more tolerance towards those stones around and if you select more tones around that that tone that I sampled from if I boost all the way to 255 it will basically select whole frame because now the tolerance is maxed out okay but we don't want that because if you want to select whole frame we can just press control or command a and we have a same situation and another great option here is this contagious option and let me show you what is that let's create a new layer and I will choose rectangular marquee tool create two squares like this and fill it with red and now if I want to select only one square with the magic wand tool I need to select this continuous because continuous will select only the colors only tones inside that border of the same tone so now it will select this square now to select that square now if I uncheck this and click again let's deselect everything click again on this color it will select all colors on the screen in the same tone of course that is sample from and that's basically how the magic wand tools works and in this image magic wand tool will be really handy tools to select a background for example I want to get rid of the background I will go to tolerance maybe 40 or 32 point sample and just go click here if I want to add to selection I will press shift and click again if I want to remove some from selection I will press alt or option key and remove tones from selection like this right and now I can just delete the background and that's it we have those two guys those two cardboard figures out of the background room we can put any other background behind them all right guys and now I will show you probably my favorite selection tool in Photoshop and that's a quick selection tool let's first get rid of those two cardboard guys and let's go to another image here I will go from magic wand to quick selection tool and that's it this tool is really easy and straightforward if you want to select something just paint across that area like with a brush and you can change the size of that quick selection tool with left and right bracket keys exactly the same like with a brush and that's it I'll choose the size of it and just go and paint across the legs because I want to select only the legs for this example if you want to deselect some parts like the sky in between the legs press and hold alt or option key and just across that area and maybe it sucks here and that's it you can see how really easy and quickly this store is working that's why it's called a quick selection tool now we can go maybe to hue and saturation change the color blacks why not maybe create something like water it's running here and that's it if you want to select the sky really quickly and really really easily just do it that's it we can delete the sky if we want let's press delete and now we can put some other sky behind this guy and we are done I don't know let me show you let's undo this few times like this and let me show you how the magic one tool is not good for this if I want to select the sky nest completely mess I can tweak this as much as you as I want and I will not get the desired effect really quickly I can get again the desired effect but I need to spend a lot more time that's why the quick selection tool is really really handy for this work if you like what you see so far press that like button if you don't like dislike it and if you do not subscribe yet please consider subscribing red guys now I will show another powerful selection tool in Photoshop and that's a pen tool actually I have a whole tutorial dedicated to pen tool you can find it right here and if you're more interested in that tool go watch it and master data because this is really important tool in Photoshop and now I will show just example where is handy to use the pen tool so let's go alright let's go to another image and for example let's make selection of this straw and the glass for that I will use the pen tool you can just go here and click on the pen tool or you can use a keyboard shortcuts to make your workflow even faster like I'm doing and just press P on a keyboard to enter the pen tool and now everything is straightforward of course if you want to know more about a pen tool please watch that tutorial that I have because it's more in-depth everything about the pen tool and pen tool is really great when you have some surfaces like this where you have a lot of curvature and you want to create really really precise selection of an object and extract data object outer dragon later do whatever you want with that okay and I will really quickly do this and finish the selection now when I have my path around the glass I can press ctrl or command enter and I will have my selection around that now I can press ctrl command J to extract glass and I have two of them it can make one smaller if I want and put it right here why not and so on and so on and the great thing about the pen tool is that it saves that pad for later if you want to go and revisit it to change it or throughout the same selection from that path again so to do that you just need to go here from layers to pads and you have working path and if you want to lot again the selection you need to press ctrl command key and click on that you will all the same selection again you can press ctrl + J to extract this or to do anything that you want or if you want to change pad for example you can see that I missed here the selection is not perfect I can go and just click once on that I have this pad again a lot here and I can go to direct selection tool this arrow here direct selection tool and click here and move this that's great and now I can press again ctrl or command enter and law that is the selection go back to layers go to bedroom layer press ctrl + J and extract that again and I'll have another copy of that same glass and that's really really handy to know all right guys the next selection tool is based on a course and it's called color range that's a great tool when you want to select same colors in the scene or same or surfaces with the same colors and so on and so on or even multiple colors together and so on let me show that real quickly right let's go to another image let's use this cube with smiley and some letters and for example we want to select only the cube not smiley not a letters not a background just this yellow color and for that we can go to select and color range that's a great tool to work with right and we have an eyedropper tool if we go with a dropper to and click on the background it will select portion of the backgrounds if we go on a cube it will select just some parts of the cube and we want to select everything that is yellow so we can go press and hold shift and just sample all course or tones of yellow color like this and as you can see here we have really nice result if you want to see result on this big image you can go to selection preview and choose grayscale you will see exactly the same that we are seeing here and you can add even more tones or you can choose black you can choose white or you can choose quick mask and that's great too so I like here white and I want to select even more of these tones down below and because we have some yellow colors on the background or the floor actually it will be included in the selection but we can fix it really really quickly let's go back to grey and now we have a fuzziness slider if you boost it up it will select more of those tones and eventually to try to select everything on image if we go all the way down it will not be so good so we need to find some sweet spot like this maybe and then we can press ok and we will have our selection ready so now we can go and load maybe curse or hue and saturation why not and change the hue of that cube actually we are now change the hue of the background because we need to invert the selection to invert the selection just press ctrl or command I and that's it let's go back here and now you can change only the color of the cube not the smiley not everything else if you want to fix the background you can press alt or option key and go here to the mask to see how the mask looks like and just use brush regular brush B on a keyboard or you just go here use the black color and just really quickly let's make a brush bigger remove this I will not be so precise right now but this is how you can do it right and when you're done go again press alt or option key on the mask and that's it you have really really great option of course you can add even more like maybe curves without or option key just go drag-and-drop here to copy the same layer mask and then you can make it brighter or darker do and maybe a contrast or anything that you want so this is how you can select in Photoshop based on the colors let me show you on another image right here for example I want to select only the background to remove the background and to replace it to something else we can again use this selection select color range and just choose white background as you can see I have really really nice mask I can go and tweak with this maybe like so and with the shift key I will sample more and that's great now I can press ok and again create a mask I really quickly remove the background I can fix the next mask later by painting with white if I want and so on and so on and that's it I have really quickly removed that white background of course you can do it let's let's delete a mask you can do it with the magic one - lets go to magic wand and just press and that's it delete background that's even quicker so there are a lot of different ways a lot of different tools to do the same thing in Photoshop but sometimes you can use only one or combination a few tools to do the job so let's go to another example let me show you what I think right guys here we have this really interesting head out of the cubes and we have this 2 color background and for example I want to get rid of that background and to change it for some other color or some other image and to do that we need to create the selection for the head or for the background to create a mask out of that and so on and so on to make this happen and quick selection tool as you can see here is not a good option because it will nicely create selection around the head but all those small details inside it will not do the job and again for example select and color range it will not do the job at all so we need to find some other method and great method for this example is to use channels to create create layer mask out of that then to get rid of this background so let me show how this works we need to go from layers to channels and as you can see we have RGB red green and blue Channel and we need to find the most contrasted channel to make the mask from it and if you remember the mask layer mask contains only black and white color everything that is white it's completely visible on the screen everything that is black is completely invisible so let's go and find the most contrasted channel here the blue is not good Green is even worse and the red is almost perfect as you can see we have almost black background and almost completely white hat so we need to make some tweaking to make this completely black and white and for that we need to make a copy of this red Channel because we don't want to mess the original channel we will ruin the image so to make a copy just go drag this channel on the new channel icon and now we have a copy of that so now there are few different options to do one and the fastest way here is through odd levels press ctrl + L or go to image adjustment levels and just go here and make everything that is black even darker and everything that is white even brighter like like this and when it's completely bright like this we are done and we can press ok and that's it another way just to let you know that there are a few different ways how you can make this black and white because sometimes these levels will not work good another way is to use dodge and burn tools for example we can use burn tools put on shadows and export we can change as ever we want maybe sometimes 50 is okay sometimes 50 is too much etc etc and just go and paint make everything that is dark even darker and if you go over the white spots don't worry too much because we set to affect only the shadows it will sometimes affect the mittens - but brighter areas will not be affect and that's for blacks and now we can switch from burn to dodge to put it on highlight and use some exposure and you will do again similar job don't worry if you go over the blacks because it will affect only the highlights if one pass is not enough go one more time and that's it right and let's undo these few times and let me show you again with Laos come on control L this and this this is really really fast press ok and now to lodge this as a layer mask first as a selection you need to press the whole control man key click on that go back to RGB two layers and just lowered here as a mask now we can go and use a solid color layer put to any color that we want put it down below and now as you can see we have this completely separated out of the better perfect selection we can change this color to any color that we want and we will still have this perfect selection there is another way how you can use channels to create a layer mask and that's by using a calculation option in Photoshop so let me show you that all right guys let's go to another image and for example let's extract this girl out to the background so let's change this white to some other color and for that I will use calculations but before we go to calculations menu I like to go to channels and find the most contrasted Channel for this image and in this case this is a blue one and now that I know that the blue channel is most contrasting one I can go back to RGB to our layer or to state in the channels doesn't matter at all and I will go to image and choose calculations and now the fun begins calculations will basically blend two channels together using blending modes and as a result it will give you completely new channel and it can blend two of the same channels like two Reds two greens to Blues or combination like green and red blue and green and so on and so on and now that I know because I know that blue channel is smoked most consciously one I will go here to source one and choose first channel is blue and the source to choose second channel has a blue too and I will use blending modes to blend them too and for that time lose I will start to multiply and go with the arrows up and down and try to find the most contrast the result in this case this is a linear burn and I will just press ok and I will have a new channel as a result that's great if you're not familiar with the blending modes you can watch my tutorial about that right here to get and know all the blending modes and to to handle them better right guys now we need to tweak this channel to create black and white version of this image we don't need to see her face we need to make her completely black and we have already background completely white so we can do that by using Dodge burn tools like in the previous examples or we can use a brush tool set in overlay blending mode with black and white colors to do the same thing almost the same thing so let me show both of that so we can use burn tool put it on shadows and just go and burn down this or we can use the brush tool put it in the overlay blending mode black color and just do the same if I go a little bit for the white it will not be affected because it's in overlay blending mode and this is how it works alright I can go back to normal and maybe fix some things but this is perfectly good now we need to load this channel as the layer mask so to do that I will press ctrl command key click on wall for one solid this is a selection go back to RGB and two layers and just create a new layer mask now we need to invert the layer mask by pressing ctrl command I and that's it we have really really great extractions so we just we will just get rid of the background so now we can go and create new adjustment layer like solid color choose some nice color maybe bluish one and put it down below and now as you can see we have some fringing around the hairs here maybe on some other color will be more visible let me see fringing maybe a little bit darker color yes you can see some white colors around here and to fix that weak we can do that really really easily just go on the mask and go to select and select and mask right here click on that and now we have done so of options here but I will go to decontaminate colors check that and output to new layer with layer mask press ok and that's it now I have it on a new layer I can change the color that I like better maybe this and we have perfect selection here it's perfectly selected out of background and we can of course changed any color that we want and that's the result maybe I like this blue because it's complementary with this did your hair and so on and so on alright guys this is how you can use calculations method in Photoshop to create perfect selections for your images and calculations methods needs a little bit more experience in channels and blending modes and to get that experience just practice a lot apply this calculations method on tons of images and you will get there right now I will show you how you can select the trees in Photoshop or how it can replace the sky in Photoshop really really quickly and easily so let's do it ok let's go to another image and here I want to select only the trees and the foreground here and I want to get rid of the sky actually I want to replace the sky with this one and to do that I can use any of the selection methods that I showed you today or I can use combination of few of them I will use alpha channels for that and I will show another new way another new trick how you can do that really quickly so let's go first to the channel tab and choose the most contrasted Channel in this case this is the blue one I will make a copy of that and then I will go to levels press ctrl manual keyboard and make dark even darker and make bright even brighter like this I don't want to make it too bright because I will get I will ruin the trees like so and now I will go and use Dodge tool on highlights and go and make this parts white and I can make I can use the rectangular marquee tool select everything here and fill it with white right and here I can fill it with black and use burn to to make this even darker okay because I need completely black and white version of the mask and I can zoom it and maybe maybe go and fix the trees a little bit like this just those trunks that's nice this one a little bit this is good good that's great right I have some spots here but I can use just a regular brush with the black color and get rid of this of course I need to go to normal blending mode and you can see that's it alright now that we have our channel ready for masking I will go and press ctrl command key click on that and lord that as a layer mask back here on the tree layer right but I need to invert the mask press ctrl man I and that's it as you can see I have a perfect selection around here my tree is really really nice selected and if you have a higher res image it will be even better because you will have more pixels to work around right that's one way how you can do it again same here you can go channel find the most contrast one in this case again blue and do the same steps right now I will show another trick how you can really quickly get rid of the sky but there is one condition the sky needs to be blue it can't work with the grey sky or some other color sky so to do that we need to use a blending tool in Photoshop if you're not familiar with the blend if you can find my tutorial about that right here and now I will show you really quickly how to do it I will not go in that what the blend if is and how to use it you already have Tory about it right now I will duplicate actually I will get rid of this layer mask right the little Hermes and double click on the layer and go here to blending options and down below we have blended dialog box I will switch from gray to blue and I will go where says this layer and I don't want blue to be visible in this layer this currently active layer so I will remove the Blues out of that as you can see really quickly I can get rid of this guy but as you want look at this tree right here I will get rid of some colors on the tree and to fix this I just need to press alt or option key and separate this slider on two halves so I'll have a better transition of the sky and that's that's it right I will press okay and I have perfectly removed sky out to the background same here double click on this go to blend if blue this is better because we have more even blue sky and I can just go and that's it right I can separate this and this is it really fast and easy way to get rid of the sky to easily the tree and to change the background you can move this freely and as you can see this is really really great right now I will show you a few more things how you can really quickly and easily select your subject out of the background using some new features in Photoshop so let's do it let's go back to our cardboard figures and we have some new features here first is select subject option and that's introduced in Photoshop 2018 and it will try automatically to select your subject out to the background so if I press this it will calculate what is the subject what is the background and it will try to select and it's not bad and most of the times you need to tweak that selection for example I will use the quick selection tool and go with Alt key and just remove this and this and now it is much much better I can change background and everything that we did before that's one feature another feature is select mask this is not so new feature but maybe some of you are not familiar with that so you can go and click select a mask and here with your past this slider you can lower the opacity you can change the view merchants to onion skin to on black and white and so on and so on for example I like this overlay and I just want to lower the opacity to see what I'm doing I will go and use quick selection tool its regular quick selection tool and it will really quickly select everything and here like this and let's select this part and now if we have something like this part of the background visible and this we can really quickly find that by going and use refine edge tool or refine edge brush and just go or this that's great and just go over this and this is really really nice I will press ok and I have a selection I can create masks and that's it I am done with our background all right and another great feature to select things is to select let's go to for example this image is to select make selections based on a focal distance so as you can see here these plants are in focus and the background is out of focus so for example I want to get rid of this background really quickly by using really nice feature and that is here in select and focus area and I can click right here right and it will try fortunate will try to determinate what is in focus what is not and of course we can always refine things we can press alt or option key we will have - here if you want to - to get rid of this part that is part of the wall behind and just like this it will get rid of that or with the plus we can go and make the selection visible this part visible and that's it we can soften the edge and so on and so on we can play what is in focus what is not in focus so we can play with that too and so on and so on when we are done we can press ok but we have output option too so we can choose new layer with layer mask or any other options I like new layer layer mask and press ok and that's it now we can set another layer as a background and we have really easily and fast fast to change the background so this is before this is after before and after alright guys that's it for today I really hope that you liked this episode and it you learn something new out of it now that you know all the selection tools and masters in Photoshop you can use any of them or combination of them to make a perfect selection for your image and what is really important is to practice a lot to master all those methods and tools and then you will know which one will work best for your image to make fastest and most accurate selection alright if you have any questions regarding this episode please leave them in the comments below I will be glad to answer them if you want to help me to make this channel even bigger and better you can do it by visiting my patreon page the link is down there in the description and of course you will get some things in return subscribe if you're not already ring that bell to get notified about all the future episodes and see you guys in the next one bye bye

Channel: Nemanja Sekulic

Views: 117,184

Keywords: Selection, How to select anything, How to Select ANYTHING in Photoshop, Nemanja Sekulic, extract, how to make a selection, remove, how to change background, Photoshop, Tutorial, Laso tool, Mask, Alpha channel, calculations, Pen tool, Magic wand, Quick selection tool, Refine edge, How to select hair, Hair selection, Select tree, Sky remove, Blend if, Selection tools, Focus area, color range, How to make a selection, How to extract hair, complex selection, How to, の仕方, Howto

Id: 92AX35LvBa8

Length: 36min 13sec (2173 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 05 2018