From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

The Hail Mary of automated selections - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

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The Hail Mary of automated selections

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- So let's say that everything that I've shown you so far, things like the predictable Color Range command, and what I imagine will be the ongoing experiment that is Select Subject, don't quite deliver the results you're looking for. In that case, Photoshop gives you one last Hail Mary of an automated selection command. Once again, it resides in the Select menu, and it goes by the name Focus Area. Its job, select the in-focus areas of a photograph independently of the out-of-focus areas. So let's say that you have a photo that was shot tight, with a narrow depth of field. By that I mean there's a focus point, the point at which the lens is perfectly focused, and everything in front or behind that plane is out of focus, or, more simply put, blurry. Select Subject does okay with such images, but it's hard to predict. The old-school black magic that is the Quick Selection tool likewise sometimes works, but very often not. And here's the problem. Neither feature gives you any real control. They just do what they do. Which means sometimes they fail. Oftentimes, actually, they fail. And when they fail, the command to try, the one with the controls, is Focus Area. Now I'm gonna start this chapter by explaining a lotta core topics. How edges work as compared to noise, how the Quick Selection tool functions, hint, it's not quick, how other commands in the Select menu, such as Grow and Similar, can make your life easier. And then we'll focus-in on the Focus Area command. And as usual, a whole lot more.

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