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Selecting. Part 1 of a 4 part sci fi mini series
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Make a Good Selection:
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1.
Love That Lasso
So you want to make a good selection? Whatever your goal: pasting a selected area into another image... making a color adjustment to a selected area... blurring or sharpening... applying a filter- whatever, one of the most basic talents you need to use Photoshop effectively is making an accurate selection.
For my money, the Lasso Tool  is one of the best Photoshop has to offer. In 6.0, clicking that small black arrow reveal the three lasso tools you have to choose from:
I hardly ever use the Magnetic Lasso. I works well only if there's a decent amount of difference between your target and the background, and if that's the case, there's usually a quicker way (such as using the Channels Palette or Magic Wand.) In an image such as we have at left (where the hair and the wall are very close in hue), there's no substitute for the (Freehand) Lasso Tool. |
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2.
Your Work Space
Here's how I work: In order to get an accurate outline, I need to zoom way in on an image and patiently outline the subject. (If you do a lot of this, you must get a graphics tablet- using a stylus for outlining is much easier that a mouse.)
Anyway, Let's take a look at my work space over there on the left. I'll choose View: New View so I can have two views of my file visible. On one, I'll zoom way in so I can see tons of detail and outline well. This is the large view on the left. This is where I work. It's easy to get a little lost when you've magnified your image so much, so in the other view I zoom it down until it's small and I can see the entire image. This I use for reference, so I don't lose sight of the "big picture." |
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3.
Adding On
I'll outline a section, then hold down the Shift key to add on and outline another section. This way you can piece by piece build a large selection all while zoomed in. In order to pan around your magnified image, hold down the Space Bar to have instant access to the Hand Tool  . Just keep the space bar held down and drag to scroll around your image- even while your in the middle of making a selection. |
 
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4.
Closing Up
It took me about 10 minutes to move around the entire figure and complete a detailed outline of the edge (see left image). Once I'd finished outlining the organic shapes with the freehand Lasso, I switched
to the Polygonal Lasso to outline the toy light saber with straight lines.
After that was done, it was a simple matter to zoom out and drag around the interior of the figure by holding Shift and outlining with the Lasso again. At this point my selection was complete (see image on right.) |
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5a.
Check Out Channels
After you save your selection (you did, didn't you?) by choosing Select: Save Selection... you can see it resting comfortably in the Channels Palette as an Alpha Channel with whatever name you gave it.
Note: In the image on the right I've duplicated the Alpha Channel in question by dragging it down to the Create new channel icon on the bottom of the palette (it looks like a dog-eared sheet of paper.) I did this because I'm planning on altering the selection, and wanted a back-up copy of the original. Also, there's another channel which affects the levels in my image. For more on that, see my tutorial, Correcting Scans With The Levels Command. |
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5b.
If you click In the square to the left of the alpha channel to "turn on" the channel you'll see the eyeball icon (see 5a above.) When you do this you'll see a representation of your selection similar to my image at left. Double click the alpha channel to affect how this displays:
In my image, I've chosen the color to represent the Selected Areas of my image. I've chosen a blue as the mask color and set it to 40%. I forget what the default was, but I think it was a red at a lower percentage which mimicked rubylith, semi-transparent stuff airbrush artists would cut and use to mask of areas of their image in the old days of retouching.
Want to alter your selection with a paintbrush tool at this point? Easy. The way my settings are, I can choose the airbrush and paint with Black to add on to that 40% Blue area which represents my selection; or paint with white to erase, or subtract from the blue area. This can be a great way to do some fine areas like hair which are better selected by painting over than by outlining with a Lasso. This is the same as being in Quick Mask Mode  . Note: if you have Color Indicates: Masked Areas as your preference, Black and White behave opposite as described above (black conceals; white reveals.) |
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6.
Another Channel View
If, rather than clicking where the Eyeball Icon goes as I described, you simply click on the Channel's name or icon, you'll see it as I do to the left. All the other channels have turned "off", and my alpha channel is the only "on." I'm going to work in this mode for step 7 below, but if you choose to use a paint tool to affect your selection, like I talked about above, you can use black & white to add or subtract from the selection. This method of working is the same as working with a Layer Mask active. |
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7a.
Change The Channel!
You all know, of course, that one of the tricks to pasting an image onto a new background, and making it look like it belongs there, is to have it's edges blur with the background. My selection is nice & accurate, but it has a hard edge. There are many ways to remedy this. I could have assigned a positive number to the Feather: option on my selection tool. Or, I could paste the hard-edged selection, and choose Select: Modify: Border; then blur the border (described in my tutorial Blending Edges on a Composite Photo.)
Or I could do this: With the Alpha Channel on, I choose Filter: Blur: Gaussian Blur... and I blur the edge of my selection by blurring the alpha channel directly. See my images at left to see how the hard edges were affected. I like this method because I can use the Radius: slider to control exactly how much the selection will be feathered (blurring its edges) and see instant results in the Preview window. |
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7b.
See the results of what I did?
We're looking at a close up of the top of the would-be Jedi's head in the images at left.
The top image is how my outline job would look if pasted on a white background. You can see it's detailed, but it still looks like someone took an X-Acto knife and carefully cut out a photo.
The bottom image shows the same thing after the channel was blurred (as in 7a above). It's much more convincing. This sort of blurring imitates what happens in real photos, but many graphic designers forget this step. I saw it as recent as 2 weeks ago when I was looking at a major magazine which had a composite photo accompanying an editorial. |
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8.
Another Option:
Once the image is outlined; and the saved selection (channel) blurred; you can load the selection and copy and paste onto where ever you like. If, once you paste the selection, the edge still looks a little suspicious, or you can still see some unwanted fringe pixels from the original. Use this method: Create a Layer Mask. Click the Add a mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette. Your layer should look like this:  Click on the mask icon (the black & white one on the right) and choose Filter: Blur: Gaussian Blur...
to blur the edges of the image enough to suit your tastes.
Note that thin black outline around the mask's icon above. This lets you know any work you do will affect the mask and not the photographic image.
FYI: To see only the mask in your main window (as it looks in Steps 6 & 7 above), just alt/option-click the layer mask icon.
Note: you can use Step 8 here to replace steps 7a+b above. Or you could do both. I did. |
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9.
Read
On...
You know enough now to do some pretty decent selections for whatever purpose you have.
If you'd like to see me make that toy light saber come to life, follow me on to the next tutorial, Create a Light Saber Blade. |
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