The NEW "Select Subject" Better Than Pen Tool?

when Photoshop recently updated to version 21 point 2.0 and it got fit as the bright strobe Photoshop Logan came out with a new bold one will have the new features that was listed right there was improved select subject how big of an improvement it is or is it big enough that we can finally ditch the pen tool that some of us hate well whatever it is I'm gonna tell you one thing for sure it's gonna blow your whole mind today we're gonna be comparing both the tools and also compare select subjects with the previous versions of Photoshop and also other alternatives and I'm gonna share with you three examples where you can use select subject to get away with as refined mask as with the pen tool so without any further ado let's get started [Music] [Applause] back in the magical world of Photoshop and if you wanna go ahead and download any of the photos shown in this tutorial you know what to do check the links in the description so here we have our first example and if you look closely this is an older version of Photoshop to make it clearer let's go to help and then about Photoshop cc as you can see this is version 20 point 0.9 let's try select subject on this one we are not gonna do anything extra all we will do is select the quick selection tool or the magic wand tool and at the top you will see select subject let's click on that and create a mask and save it and we will compare it with the new version of Photoshop so this is the selection let's click on the mask button right there have a look it's not so good it's okay maybe we need to work with the refine edge a little bit but it's kind of okay now let's save it file save as let's save it as example1 Photoshop 19 because this is Photoshop 2019 let's save it hit OK now let's open the same thing in Photoshop 2020 the updated version 21 point 2.0 let's open the same document right here by going to file open locate the document click on it and click on open this is PS 19 let's open that one in the new version of Photoshop as you can see the selection is not pretty good let's change the canvas background with the defaults now let's try the Select subject of the new version let's make a copy of this first of all let's name it PS 19 all right ctrl or command J we made a copy delete the mask right over there you want to delete it click on delete similarly right here select the magic wand tool or the quick selection tool or the object selection tool and at the top click on select subject and now all you gotta do is to click on the mask button now take a look at this you might not be able to see the difference because the PS 19 is turned on as well first of all let's name this PS 20 the new version now let's compare it this is PS 2020 let's create a white background and you will be able to see the difference so let's create a white solid background something like this they'll take care of the hair later but let's take a look it considered the hair right it considered those messy edges and also at the same time if you look at the hard edged stuff right here it did it perfectly as well isn't that amazing this totally was a surprise for me I'm sure it was for you too now let's for the previous version if you just look at just one previous version so let's turn on 2019 and take the white background behind it have a look at the hair first of all it did not even consider the hair and also if you look at the edges look at that it did not even consider the hard edges as well this is so bad in comparison to the later versions now let me share with you how simple your workflow becomes with the new select subject so first of all let's delete both of these we have already compared it so this is PS 2020 we did it with just one click let me share with you once again this was the image alright all we did was click on select subject that's it it considered the hair it considered the messy edges it also considered the hard edges if you look right over there and then we simply clicked on the mask button now we have a mask hair look how fast it is amazing now all you have to do you have to choose whatever background you want so I'm gonna choose a solid color choose a dark grey background put it at the back and on top of it you're gonna create one more gradient and let's create a radial gradient so style let's choose radial now this is a round gradient which you can move anywhere let's keep it here in the center and now let's open click on the bar right there so that you can edit the gradient you're gonna want to take it from white to transparent right over there let's take it away white to transparent hit ok now we can increase the scaling so in my opinion this one looks fine alright here okay and simply decrease the opacity this creates a very nice gradient so we're gonna keep it at somewhere about 40% and you can also move it if you wish to so we can move it here and there and scaling you can increase it I'm gonna increase it to 180 to make it look interesting to take care of the banding you can also add some noise and also noise makes it a little more interesting a little bit of grain looks good control-shift-n to man shift in for the new layer dialog box and then change the blend mode to overlay and check fill with overlay neutral color what that does is that it fills the layer with 50% great now overlays a blend mode which hides everything that is 50% great alright let's hit OK now you have the gray layer you don't see anything because the blend mode is set to overlay then only got to do is to go to fill them convert for Smart Filters wine so that we can change the values later let's go to filter noise and then add let's add a noise of 40 that's fine now if you have a look at it the noise is very very sharp so we need to make it softer smoother let's go to filter blur and then Gaussian blur now let's keep a Gaussian blur of 1 that's good we also don't want so much noise in the bright area so we will double click on the right-hand side of the lamp that will open up the last night's dialog box and take the slider of the underlying layer from right to left this is harsh or the Alt key or the option key click on the slider to break it apart and take it all the way apart now I'm telling you all this in a fast pace because this is not a part of the tutorial this is just to show you how simple it makes your workflow now you can add any color that you want right over here so you can add a hue/saturation adjustment layer and then just click on colorize and he can change the background to whatever color you wish so red blue green purple this is a great way to test different colors so in my opinion this color looks fantastic you can increase or decrease the saturation from right in here now it is pretty much done now you must be thinking the hair just doesn't look right it doesn't look right because it takes up the color of the background and the background previous to this the original background was very bright and therefore it took up that color we need to add some darkness to the hair how do we do that well it's pretty simple there are lots of ways of doing it one of the ways is simply changing the blend mode of the subject layer from normal to multiply right have a look at the hair it looks nice around the edges right now but there is one problem with that the problem is the subject also becomes dark right the multiplying blend node is applied throughout here's what we do we make a copy of that press ctrl or command J alright and in the copy you change the blend mode back to normal now we don't want to disturb the mask right here so we can put this layer inside a group by pressing ctrl or command G with that layer selected alright this is the normal group and we can name this the normal group and the group can have a mask of its own and that's why we added a group so click on the mask now you have double masks you can now take it away from the sides take the brush with black is the foreground color flow and opacity at 100 soft round brush and then simply paint around the sides to get the hair back right over there not a big deal now there are lots of other ways to do it this is just one of them see how you're getting all the hair back fantastic alright this looks pretty cool alright let's zoom up and there you go how simple it was to do it just one click haven't you're done now you can always take your time and get inside selected masks and work the hair a little more this was just with one click in the real world you're gonna be giving it a little more time let's jump into the second example where we will compare it with the pen tool so here we on the second example and let's try to make a selection with the pen tool of a small area because pen tool usually takes a long time alright and that's why we look for alternatives don't we alright let's zoom in and just select the pen to be is the shortcut for the pen tool be for a pen make sense alright let's zoom in and now let's create a point and then let's create another point and then we would have to hold the controller command and adjust the handle move it right there and then create another point and then just adjust the handles so that things don't get bad then create one more point create one more point all right and then if you want a corner you would have to hold the Alt key or the option key click to create a corner and from there let's get started right there then create one more point move from right here then if you want to create another corner hold the Alt key or the option key click on that and from there we can move forward just do this area all right just this little area and we're gonna compare it so let's finish this selection right click on it and then choose make selection you can always save the part as well whenever you work hard for ours and the pen to always go to the mods tab just rename it rename it to whatever you want that way that part will be saved if you don't rename it and start with another path it might get deleted don't work on the work path alright let's go back to this right-click on it and you can choose make selection or you can go to paths hold the controller command and click on thumbnail right there that also makes a selection first of all let's make a coffee we always want to have a backup let's turn it off turn the background off and click on the mask button and this was with the pen too and as you can see it's very smooth very nice however one thing we have to keep in mind it's gonna take you a long time a really long time plus it is only good for hard edges what about hair you have to select inside the hair and then again go to select and mask and work the hair you cannot select hair with the pen do it's just not possible in some cases you might have even have to paint the hair with the brush however let's compare it with select subjects this was the pen do if I turn it off it turn on the subject again and then select any of these tools like the magic wand quick selection or the object and then add the dumpee will click on select subject but at the moment this layer is turned off so let's make a copy of the background again and this time let's name it select subject all right and then simply click on select subject let's see how it performs let's click on the mask button right there and again we will create a white background right white background let's take a look at the edge it is so darn good it might not be as accurate as the pen tool because if you have a look at the pen tool it can be very very accurate as you select it but it's gonna take you a long time but this one is usable too don't you agree take a look at the edge it didn't used to be that good before it used to had some jaggery pixely edges but right now it is so smooth that it looks like the pen too and totally usable have a look at her jeans it's perfect right I can use it right away and the great part is you don't have to select the hair separately if you look at the hair it did the hair good too look at these edges this is so good you didn't have to go to selected mask and work but the refine edge none of that it directly does of your stuff I must be thinking since the background is very simple color range would work perfectly here as well actually it won't let's turn off everything and let's make a copy of the background layer all right and let's try the color range select and then color range since the background is gray it won't do a pretty good job I'm very very sure all right we have selected a particular area select the plus eyedropper and select these areas as well it does a pretty good job pretty decent let's go ahead and increase the fuzziness and as you begin to increase the fuzziness it begins to select the areas inside the subject as well that we need to work on because if you have a look at the hair it's not very good if you want perfect selection we have to again hit OK right here and then just paint back on the subject it can get very very complex let's say we hit okay first of all let's invert the selection because we want to select the subject hit okay we have the selection right there click on the mask button now if we create a white background at the back let's turn it on and as you can see most of the areas are not selected properly if you would have to go to the mask by holding the Alt key or the option key click on the mask take the brush and take a normal brush change the blend mode to overlay and start painting with white decrease the flow to about 10% and then just work these areas out let's increase the flow a little bit more and even if you just do one area perfectly let's change the blend mode to normal and fill up these areas increase the flow alright hold the on key of the option key click on the mask and if you have a look at the hair it just fries the hair up it just fries it up and the selection is just not perfect it sometimes will get some parts and it is jaggery it's not good we just cannot compare it with select subject let's delete all of that let's delete the pen tool as well and let me share with you the workflow of changing a background with this it's so simple so here we are now finder or Explorer and I have some creative polygon backgrounds that I downloaded over from Envato elements if you are interested check out the link right here alright so we're gonna use one of these 37:39 something brighter would look nice on that what about this one this one looks okay so let's just drag it and drop it into Photoshop right there I like in Mato elements because it gives you access to all of their assets Photoshop actions presets plugins stock photo stock videos and all of these photo sets overlays all of that for one fixed price you can download unlimited as many as you want as much as you want so if you are interested please to go ahead and check it out I have linked some of my favourite actions and extensions in the description below alright so let's make it a little larger something like this and bring it beneath the subject it looks fantastic now if you want to create a depth of field effect you need to add a little bit blur to it so let's go to filter blur and then Gaussian blur a simple Gaussian blur would do let's go for seven and hit OK now let's move the subject a little bit to the right there you go and what if he's try to create a it'll make it look like a wall so double-click on the right side of the left this will open up the last Einstein a box and just check drop shadows select drop shadows do you know how pros move shadows very simple right from the image just like this so let's move it a little far away you can soften it even more you can just play with the opacity if you want to make it even darker you can do that we will keep it at about 26 this looks nice hit OK now if you want to play with the shadow even more let's separate the drop shadow by going to live lens style and then create layer just hit OK right there now drop shadow is on a separate layer you can blur it even more if you want to let's go to filter convert for Smart Filters hit ok so that we can change the glow values later let's go to filter blur and then Gaussian blur we can blur it even more that's totally up to you let's just add a little bit more blur about 80 that looks ok now also we need to add some noise to the background as well that way it would look more realistic so control-shift-n I'm gonna just fast forward the same process overlay check right here and then filter convert for Smart Filters hit OK go to filter noise and then add noise about 40 is okay and then filter blur Gaussian blur one pixel right there for the noise and double-click on the right side of the area right side of the layer and then just take it away from the bright areas there you go the noise is perfect everything looks nice and on top of that you can add some color look-up tables to make it more exciting so we will add some photo shops default color look-up tables so click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose color lookup and let's choose something like late sunset he looks pretty dramatic doesn't it of course it's too much let's go for 15 and then let's create one more color lookup click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose color lookup and this time let's choose something like candlelight add a warmth takes away the colors looks pretty good about as good as 20 this one looks okay and again on top we need to add some noise because on the background we have noise but not on the subject so let's make a copy of the noise and place it at the top as well this will add some extra noise in the background and make it more exciting and there's too much noise on the subject so we will double click on add noise and reduce it to probably 30 20 funny feels nice hit okay Blair is too much so for the subject let's add a little bit blur 0.7 looks to be good and there you have it a wonderful composite look how fast select subject made it for us now let's move on to example number three and here I'm gonna share with you a simple straightforward workflow a workflow that I would personally use while creating composites using the select subject alright so here we have a simple subject and we want to simply change the background now in all of those examples we didn't use any other tools all you gotta do for a more refined result is this first of all let's mask it with the Select subject and simply click on select subject right there and it already does a pretty good job it also considers the gap right over there and click on the mask button and let's add an exciting background so here we are in our finder or Explorer and I have another set of abstract backgrounds again from Envato so I'm gonna link all of that up in the description let's just pick this one how do you feel about that that one should be nice should go with the current image and let's make it a little larger hit Enter or return and place it under at the subject looks pretty good but also we need some contrast for this so let's open that folder again and let's take this blue one let's just drop it here as well and make it larger see how much nicer it looks we need to add a contrast of both of those so all I will do here is select the rectangular marquee tool right here and then create a rectangle just like this now you can take your time to keep it in the center and then move it here and there but I'm just gonna keep it at that and then click on the mask button this creates an exciting effect doesn't it now one of the things that you can also do to make it even more flexible let's delete the mask that is if you simply create a rectangle just above to just above the background at the very bottom let's choose the rectangle to just take away the strokes we don't want any strokes only fills and let's just take away the strokes anyway now if you create a rectangle just like this the advantage here would be first of all let's select the 4 and hold the Alt key or the option key click on the line between these two it will be limited to just that rectangle now when you select the rectangle press ctrl or command T you can adjust it to your liking you can also take your time to even Center it so let's say I like this size and all I have to do now is press ctrl or command a with the help of the move tool right there we can press this it'll centre at vertically and the center at horizontally click on this button and press ctrl or command D now you can move the subject a little bit to make things simple we can merge both of these into a smart object so select the first one hold the ctrl or command select the second one right click on it and then choose convert to smart object now let's create some stroke because the sudden change from pink to blue is just hurting the ice a little too much so double-click on the right side of the lip and then choose stroke and it looks pretty good you can always change the settings of the stroke bikes selecting the stroke and change the size and the opacity and all of that you can position it inside outside you can just set it to about 80 and hit OK there you go looks interesting now if you zoom in have a look at the hair it is selected properly but it's not refined very well also if you have a look at the beard it's not very proper so the workflow here is pretty simple all you have to do is to select the subject layer again and then with any selection tool selected click on select and mask now inside of that choose the second tool right here which is the refine edge to make the two a little smaller and just paint over the messy areas and it will make it perfect there you go those areas are taken care of even right here in the hair let's make the brush just a little larger not too large this is fine just paint over these areas and have a look how simply everything is coming back and if you can notice it's way faster right it's a high-resolution image 6000 by 4000 still select a mask is acting really faster as compared to previous versions their ego this is done hit okay once you're satisfied and now I have a look at the edge it is so much better than before and all he had to do was to go to selected mask and then work the complex edges now as of recording this video as of now we can definitely say that nothing comes close to the accuracy of manually making the selection of the mask with the pen - right but if you consider the time select subject has the edge also there's one more advantage but it comes to hair and fur select subject considers that - with the pen tool you can only select hard edges but not the hair and the fur when you click on select subject it considers those edges as well and make selections appropriately so which tool to use well that's for you to decide if you ask me here's the thing how much time does select subject take it is just one click right so click it if it works awesome you can just proceed from there if it doesn't work then you might want to move on to other methods easiest lis I hope I could show you something new I hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us than I can also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you don't miss any other feature tips tricks or tutorials I would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting this channel on patreon and helping me keep Dixon perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much polly support thank you for watching I'll see you guys again in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you [Music] [Applause] control good time [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 490,870

Keywords: photoshop update, photoshop 2020, photoshop new features, adobe, select subject, pen tool, select hair, remove halos, one click selection, remove background photoshop, automatic background remover, compositing, photo manipulation, change background, photoshop tutorial, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: v_kitSYKr3s

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 20 2020