Selecting soft edge objects using Select and Mask

- [Voiceover] In order to select a soft-edged object like this dog, we're going to use the Quick Select Tool to start the selection, but then we're going to need to go in and modify that edge using the Select and Mask Task Space. In this case, I want to desaturate the background color so that the dog stands out a bit more as the main subject. I'll select my Quick Select Tool, and then start clicking and dragging over the dog. When I release the cursor, you'll notice that the icon has a plus in it, so I can continue to drag in order to add to this selection.

If Quick Select selects too much, I can either change to the Quick Select with the minus icon or I can just hold down the opt key to toggle to the subtract from. This way I can remove this area in the foreground, then I'll release the opt or the alt key, and continue selecting so that we can select the legs and the rest of the dog. I also want to select this area over his ear and the front of his paw.

If you know that you're going to go in and refine the mask using this new Selected Mask Task Space, you wanna make sure that you select all of the subject, but where the subject transitions into the background, like in these fur areas over here, you wanna make sure that you only select the subject, in this case the dog, and not the background. All right, I'll choose Select and Mask and we automatically get a preview of the selection that we've already created.

If I go over to the View Mode, you'll notice that I can view the image a variety of different ways and I can use the f key to cycle through these views. So right now we're in Onion Skin View and it has a transparency slider, so if I would need to see more of the original image I move the transparency to the left. If I want to see less of the image and just what I have selected, I'll move it over to the right. For now, I'll leave it right about 25%. But let's take a look at a few of the other views.

If I tap the f key, that's the Marching Ants View. F key again is the Overlay. I'll tap f again, now this time we're going to view this against black, and you can see that both the black, as well as the white, have an Opacity Slider, so I can see what this would look like against pure white or we can reveal more of the background. It's just helpful to be able to see the background when you're refining the selection. All right, I'll tap f again to take us to the Mask Mode.

This is just viewing this on black and white. And the last view here views this on layer, so if we did have a layer underneath the dog we would see through to that layer. For now, we'll return back to the Onion Skin. Now, I can see that I've missed part of the dog right over here, so I'm going to use the Quick Select within the Refine and Mask Task Space in order to add that to the selection. Then, I'll switch to the Refine Edge Tool, because I need to select a little bit more of the fur around the dog's face.

Let's use Cmd 1 in order to zoom in to 100% and then I'll position the cursor in the area that I want to re-calculate, so it's that transition area between the area that's selected, the dog, and the background. I'll get a little bit smaller of a brush using the [ key, so the [ key decreases the size of the brush, the ] key increases the size, or I could use the slider here in the Brush Preset Picker if I wanted to change the size, hardness, spacing or the shape of the brush, meaning the angle or the roundness.

For now, I'll leave it at 25 pixels, tap the return key in order to dismiss that, and then click and drag over the edge area here, and as soon as I release my cursor, you can see that Photoshop is recalculating and actually adding to my selection, refining that nice fine hair area. But I also notice that it took away a little bit too much information right here on the side of the dog's face. I want to paint that in and make sure that it's 100% opaque, so I'll switch to the Brush Tool.

It's set to the plus. I'll come over and just brush that area in because I don't want it to be semi-transparent. All right, then I'll use the spacebar in order to temporarily access the Hand Tool, and scoot to the tail area. I'll switch back to the Refine Edge Brush and just paint over that tail area in order to include a little bit more information and I'll paint over down along the bottom to actually subtract some of the area there, because I don't need that darker area.

When you have a soft-edge subject such as this dog with all the fur, it might also help to enable the Edge Detection. I'll turn on the Smart Radius, which will automatically set the Radius Slider to 10 pixels. Just something you should know, if you turn the Radius Slider down below 10 pixels the Smart Radius actually gets disabled, and that's just because you don't get a benefit from using Smart Radius when the radius is this small. I'll go ahead and enable Smart Radius again and that will set it to 10, and you can see how along the back of the dog it's gotten a little bit softer, as far as the selection goes, which is going to enable me to distinguish between all of those little hairs.

All right, down at the bottom I think we're fine there with the amount that we have selected, but if I wanted to take any of that away I could go to the Brush Tool, click on the minus, and then just refine this a little bit taking away a little bit of the shadow area. But because we're going to just change that area to be a little bit less saturated, I think we'll be just fine with the mask the way it is. All right a few other things to point out on the Properties Panel here. You can make Global Refinements.

Now, if you had a harder-edged subject, like say a flower that you were selecting, these Global Refinements can really help you with the selection, because not only can they smooth out a selection, you can also add a feather to a selection. So you can a make it a little bit soft in the edge, but the nice thing is is that if, say for example, you select a flower, but there's a little bit of a halo around the entire edge where the flower, maybe, is blended with the background, so maybe you have a pink flower going to green, you can actually add a little bit of a feather to soften the edge and then use the Shift Edge Command in order to move that edge a little bit into the flower, in order to remove the halo, or you can go the other way moving it outwards if you were trying to select the inverse, for example.

All right, let's scroll down. You can see here that I can invert the selection. So let's zoom out using cmd 0 and then tap Invert, now we can see this is the background area, which is actually what I want to be selected when I add the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, and then under Output Settings, if I scroll down, I want to output this to a Selection, but there are a variety of different options, such as Layer Mask or a New Layer or New Layers with Mask, but for now I'll leave it to Selection and then click Okay.

I now have a selection of the background area in my image, so that when I use the Adjustments Panel and click on the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and move the Saturation Slider to the left, we can see that it will desaturate the background and in the Layers Panel we can see on my Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer that Photoshop has automatically taken the selection that we created in the Select and Mask Task Space and turned that selection into a mask to be used in the Adjustment Layer.

Excellent, I think you can see that even though the dog is furry, the Quick Select Tool and the new Select and Mask Task Space make it easy to select him and restrict our changes to only the background.