Using the image to select itself

- One of the most popular uses for Photoshop is to take…an image that was originally captured against one background…and composite it against another,…which by no coincidence, is why I've already devoted…four chapters to this topic:…chapters 9 and 10 in the fundamentals course…and chapters 16 and 17 of the advanced course.…I know, my memory is fuzzy too; so permit me to recap.…In those chapters, we looked at Photoshop's…automated selection and masking functions…with special attention paid to the quick mask mode,…the color range command, and the select and mask workspace.…

Now I'm the first to admit, I love these features.…I use them all the time; but while Photoshop's…automated features often do a great job…of simplifying a process, they don't always measure up…to what you can accomplish when you roll up your sleeves…and apply a bit of carefully researched DIY manual labor,…which is where this chapter comes in.…Masking, pro level masking, is the art of using the image…to select itself; and that's where we switch…