See my all-new Remove Any Background tutorial!

We do selections frequently in Photoshop and there are many ways to do them. In this tutorial we will work with some of the many different ways to handle selections, including some of the more difficult selection chores.

In this tutorial, we will do this mostly in the context of removing backgrounds from pictures. In particular, we will be using lasso, magic wand, a quickmask, a layer mask, the pen tool, and a special selection using a threshold adjustment.

If you want to select something that is a solid colour, or a few colours, you can use the magic wand. Selections with gentle curves but non-contrasted backgrounds may be best done by making a path and converting that to a selection. Some selections are most easily done by colouring on a quickmask and then touching up the selection afterwards. Some selections require a combination of these. And some selections require still other methods.

Depending upon the subject and its background, you will want to adjust your method. As you get more practice doing various selections, you will get better at deciding how to attack a particular situation. You will also discover that you just LIKE doing selections one way better than another. And that's fine too!

The goal in "deleting backgrounds" is to isolate the pixels that are not in our subject. Then we will either cover them with a mask or erase them.

We can either select the pixels of our subject and then invert the selection, or we can select the background from the start. It depends upon your image, which will be the better way. Let's get into some examples!

I. The Leaf.
For our first project, we are starting with the image to the right . We are going to then add little white leaves alongside this red one to get a picture like the one just below it. And we won't have to draw a thing!

Begin by right-clicking the image to the right. Choose Save as.. and put it somewhere where you will be able to find it. ;)

Now, let's have a look at this: The small leaves are the same shape as the big one, they are just smaller. This is a perfect job for Select -> Transform!

First we will make a selection and then mess with it a little. With this subject all one colour, we can use the magic wand tool to select the leaf.

Hold the shift key and drag the selection smaller. What does holding the shift key do? Try it both ways!

Once you get your selection the size and shape you want, hit the Enter key to lock in that selection transformation.

Now move the selection into place. To move a selection, you have to have a selection tool (any of them) chosen and put your cursor within the selected area. You see your cursor change into the little "move selection" tool.

(Note: You can't move the selection itself with the move tool. If you use the move tool, you will move whatever pixels are inside your selection. To move the selection, you use the cursor with a selection tool picked.)

If you have your selection close to where you want it, but need to just give it a nudge, with your selection tool still chosen, use your arrow keys to nudge your selection. Try this.

Now let's do that again for the top leaf.. but we don't have to make the selection again. We just have to MOVE the selection. You know how to do this.

But what if we want the second leaf to be exactly in line with the first one? The Shift key is the one that kind of keeps things in line for many of Photoshop's functions and this is no exception. However if you try to hold the shift key and then drag your selection, it is trying to ADD to your selection -- NOT the goal!

So what you do is begin to move your selection and THEN press and hold the shift key. This constrains the movement to 45 degree angles, making it much easier to find your exact placement! Alt-backspace to fill this with white.

So we want the selection we have... LESS the red part. So we'll SUBTRACT a selection of the red from the leaf selection we have.

Grab your magic wand and hold the alt key. See that little tiny minus sign there beside it? Ok now click the red part and watch your selection.

Alt-backspace to fill this in. All done! Now let's have a go at the Lasso!

Ok.. so, as cool as the magic wand is, why can't we just always use it? Well, let's say that we want to remove the background from this feather image.

When the background has some colours that are close to your subject as is the case here, you might end up with some background chunks selected too. If this happens, you can lower the tolerance setting on your magic wand in the options bar.

With contiguous turned off on the options bar, when you click on a certain blue in the image, ALL the blue of that shade (within the tolerance you have set) will be selected. With contiguous checked, only the parts that are touching where you are will be selected. So, with the picture at the right, try using the magic wand with contiguous on or off? What happens?

Try adding to the selection. To add to a selection that you have active, hold the Shift key while you have your selection tool.

If you get too much selected, you can subtract from the selection by holding the alt (option) key and select the part you what to subtract from the selection.

You could go pretty crazy trying to do this selection with a magic wand. So you may have to use a different selection method altogether as I am about to show you....

Touching with the magic wand.. holding shift to add subsequent touches to the selection....

I am going to put a black background with green corners behind my rose, but I'll make the background later. First i'll make my rose selection.

Here's how to do this:

Then, to enter Quick Mask mode, first double-click your "Edit in Quick Mask mode" button (pictured in green in my screenshot to the right) to check your options. You want it to read "Color indicates Selected Areas."

You can even make the colour of your quick mask into the latest fashion colour, if you like. (Using a different colour can make it easier to see the mask. A time when you might wish to use a different colour mask would be.. this example, since the rose and the mask are pretty close in colour! I went ahead and used the 50% red, thought, the default.)

(If you end up with the background selected, as i have here to the right, then do Select -> Inverse if you want to convert this to a layer mask as i did in the next step.)

To make your selection into a Layer Mask, with your selection active, click the Add Layer Mask button (here it is green). Et voilà! Masked!

Whatever you have in the layer below will show through. At this point, I clicked the new layer icon, chose black for my foreground colour and then clicked alt-backspace to fill that layer with black.

Should you see that your edge is a little rough or not accurate in some places, you can always edit your layer mask. Just click it in the layers palette, and choose either a white or black brush and edit your troubles away!

(For a more detailed treatment of layer masks, see my tutorial "Fading Images into One.")

In Photoshop, there are always at least three ways to do something.Since there is some pronounced contrast in this photo, one way to select the tree from the background is by using a threshold level adjustment.

Here's how I did it:

If your image is the background layer, double-click it in the layers palette to make it into a regular layer.

Then drag your image to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette to duplicate it. Click on the upper one of these, the new layer, in the layers palette to select it.

Image -> Adjust -> Threshold. Now right-click the layer in the layers palette and name it "Threshold."

When the dialog box comes up, move the slider left and right and watch your image. What you want is for your subject to be black and your background to be white. You will have to go back and forth to get just the right level of detail that you want. Click the Preview box off if you want to remind yourself where your image edges are. When the subject is black and the background is white, hit ok.

So now we have the relatively simple task of selecting just the black tree. Then we are going to use this selection as a pattern to cut the tree out of the original picture!

Choose your magic wand from the toolbox and make sure that contiguous is off. This will enable you to select all of the black pixels whether or not they are contiguous (touching each other). Then set your tolerance to a low number.

Now touch your magic wand to the tree (in the threshold layer.) This will select all the black pixels.

Now we will apply this selection to the duplicate original tree layer.

Your black tree is selected now. Click the eye off in the threshold layer. You should now see your original tree layer with the cloudy background. The original tree has the selection ants going around it.

Now click on the original layer in your layers palette. Click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Et voilà! Now what you did was you added a MASK to this layer. You did not delete the background. So if you wanted to, you could paint on the mask in either black or white to EDIT the part of the tree that is showing. This is the beauty of layer masks!

Now you can put in whatever background you want in the layer underneath the original one. I've made a white -> blue gradient sky layer.

Finally, because the tree was so dark in the original picture, the resulting cutout tree against a summer blue sky is too dark. We can fix that a bit with levels. Image -> Adjust -> Levels .. and then pull the light and medium sliders toward the left till you like your look.

Trouble-shooting.

There was a pretty hard edge around the perimeter of the tree when I did mine. This can lead to an overly crisp and fakey look. as in the shot to the right.	Softening this edge is one use for that layer mask. Click on the layer mask and then do Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and make it just one or 1.5 pixels.	Here is something else that might occur. When you are placing something against a darker background than was there, you can get a whitish fringe around the subject. The same can happen with a dark fringe on a light background. So how do you fix this? One way is to use Layer -> Matting -> Remove white matte (or remove black matte).

Here is another way to use that black silhouette tree that we got from doing the threshold adjustment.

I show just ONE way to do this tree selection. Some people have told me that they know a better/faster/more elegant way to select this tree than the one I suggest here.

How many ways can you think of to do this? Tell me your favorite way and if it is different from the ones here, I'll post it at the bottom of this tutorial!

I hope you have had fun with the activities in this tutorial and that you picked up some tidbits along the way!

Always me,

More ways to select this tree:

In your example of the tree, I prefer a slightly different approach. You can use the fact that the sky only contains blue and white, usually. The blue channel is therefore 50% of the way towards being the required silhouette, because the sky area is probably a fairly uniform light gray. All you need do is make an alpha channel from the blue channel, roughly lasso the major part of the non-sky region and fill with black. Then touch up and enhance the image, finally using threshold with a hint of blurring to give a true b&w silhouette. Create a selection from the alpha channel and then add layer mask, revealing or hiding the selection as before. I understand that your tutorials are designed to demonstrate the use of tools like magic wand along the way, but I do think this way is better in practice. (I expect there are at least four more ways of doing this!).
John Houghton

Some Advanced Selection Tips

1- In prepress clean jobs, always use PEN tool.

2- In case of hairy subjects, use PEN also if you have a magazine cover person. This sounds crazy, but they pay well. If the job is not well-paid, use Janee's procedure.. It is good, but do not forget to make a backup layer... Do not tell me I have history palette, because you'll need to purge history from time to time to free up some scratch space needed in processing layers. In addition to the procedure you may consider the following tricks:

a- In addition to threshold, you may use adjustment layers such as Hue/Saturation to increase saturation, simple brightness and contrast, to emphasize external edges, then turn on (Use All Layers) option before you use magic wand.

b- Instead of cutting sharp edges, sometimes it is more practical to stroke edges, after adding new layer above, with a layer option of Normal, and suitable transparency. Stroking edges (center option), for high resolution picture, with a hair of one pixel will add to the details rather than erasing them. If you are satisfied with the stroke, just merge down. For this step to succeed, you need high resolution for enough pixels. If your image is low-res, you may resample it to 400 percent, then after stroking, resample again to 25 per cent. Those two resampling steps will even add anti-aliasing to the edges.

c- You may actively enlarge selection made by the Magic Wand, using Select>Grow.. Grow tool's threshold is adjusted everytime using the Magic Wand palette's threshold. Thus, the sky in your tutorial may be first selected with Magic Wand, then Grow after you oversaturate by using Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

d- Another important selection tool is the Similar tool. I talked about that tool before in your Line Art Tutorial.

e- Sometimes it is helpful, after putting a saturation layer to work with your selection tools directly from channels palette. If you are in RGB mode, you may activate those channels one by one... you may notice important similar terrains, that you may select one by one, then you turn RGB combination on.

f- Sometimes converting a COPY of the image to CMYK space may help in finding more similar terrains in four channels rather than 3, then you make a layer mask, and convey it back to original image.

g- In case that you have gradient background with various colours, do the following: Put new layer... Make a gradient similar to the gradient beneath to the best quality of resemblance you could and same orientation... Turn on Difference Mode of the layer... Surprise... your background is all black. And you can sometimes select it using single try of Magic Wand, if you mastered the gradient well! Original trick.. isn't it?

h- It is sometimes helpful to use selection free transform.

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer