Photoshop help, background replacement

[haynie90]

So i have some low quality cloth backdrops with a single strobe and i was wondering how i could cut the person out of the background and place them on a digital background using photoshop. I have very little experience in photoshop so the specifics will help. Thanks so much.

 

[EIngerson]

 

[Buckster]

This works VERY well for me: Topaz ReMask - Masking Made Easy

 

[Vautrin]

hit W. you now have a tool to do a smart selection

draw over the model

use alt click to unselect if you get it wrong

at top of the screen is a "refine edge" button. refine edge + smart radius and / or edge smoothing will help you select the person

if you did a good job you can now copy to a layer, or a new file, or onto an already open file

youll probably need to resize the person and may need to do a little touching up like smudging the edge to make sure that it looks right

voulá!

 

[KmH]

Which Photoshop do you have?

Photoshop Elements (8, 9, 10, 11), Photoshop Lightroom (2, 3, 4), or Photoshop CS (4, 5, 6).

As you will have seen from above, there are many ways and tools to accomplish the same thing.

Another option is to use the Color Range feature in CS 4, 5, 6 if that is the version of Photoshop you have.

cut the person out of the background and place them on a digital background - Bing

 

[tentwo]

Sometimes a little investigation helps a little:

removing background - YouTube

More videos then ever needed on this subject.

 

[Ray12]

Extraction in Photoshop is pretty good if your edges are clean and you dont have a complex background pattern behind or around the whispy hair ends.

If your background is pretty flat and uniform...and if your edges are somewhat straight... and dont have much whispy hair in them...then Photoshop can do a pretty good job.

If you are interested in a high quality cutout... where you can see each strand of hair cleanly... without a halo or fringe around the hair edges...then you will need a third party plugin like Topaz $50 or Vertus Fluid Mask $100 to do the fine detail work. You need a subtractive process that is used in these third party products to be able to resolve the fine detail involved. Photoshop is pretty good if you have easy edges and not a lot of complicated edges or competing background detail.

If you have a complex background like pine trees, or a brick wall, or other people that fall directly within and behind the hair edges...then even the third party products strain at figuring out what is a strand of hair or a pine needle! In this case you need to do "Hair Repair" work using cutouts, masks, and clean hair strands from another image to fix up the bad cut.

Hair extraction can be easy... if you dont have complex edges...but if you do...You could end up having a "Bad Hair Day" yourself!! LOL.

 

[haynie90]

Sometimes a little investigation helps a little:

removing background - YouTube

More videos then ever needed on this subject.

yea countless hours on youtube the specifics were left out leaving it hard to understand

 

[haynie90]

Which Photoshop do you have?

Photoshop Elements (8, 9, 10, 11), Photoshop Lightroom (2, 3, 4), or Photoshop CS (4, 5, 6).

As you will have seen from above, there are many ways and tools to accomplish the same thing.

Another option is to use the Color Range feature in CS 4, 5, 6 if that is the version of Photoshop you have.

cut the person out of the background and place them on a digital background - Bing

CS5