Extracting a Single Subject
Lesson 11 from: FAST CLASS: The Business of Professional HeadshotsGary Hughes
Extracting a Single Subject
Lesson 11 from: FAST CLASS: The Business of Professional HeadshotsGary Hughes
Lesson Info
11. Extracting a Single Subject
Lessons
Getting Headshot Clients
14:06 2Pricing
13:24 3Six Styles of Headshots
29:36 4Posing Basics
06:26 5Basic Standing Pose
04:56 6Basic Seated Pose
02:43 7Head Position
04:16 8Expression Sells the Image
06:27Lesson Info
Extracting a Single Subject
So I'm gonna start here with Oscar. Now what we've got, we've got clean, solid lines all the way around. We've got no highlight of blowback from the background. This should be I haven't done this in advance. This is the first time I'm looking at this pretty easy. So the first thing I want to do is I would grab my quick selection tool, which is right there with a magic wand tool in the w and select the W key. Now, this quick selection tool is a really neat tool that kind of learns as you go. Um What, uh, how to grab the edges of something So it gets it right on the first time a lot. But as you start to correct a little bit, it will get smarter, which is pretty cool in the individual image. Not like overtime. Like sky net. It's not gonna take over. The machines will win. So you just literally can and and you see the contrast? It's so obvious that it just grabs it. There's no problem. Boom, because we shot it correctly. All right. How easy is that now? Here's the mistake, people. If you j...
ust go Oh, Let's just copy that onto a new layer. You're gonna have some issues particular, particularly when you get to the hair. That kind of looks crappy. Now watch what happens if we were to, let's say, put a white background behind it or a black background. Let's try white. You know, it's still mostly It's good, but look under the ears messed up over here, and your edge is not very precise, You know, anywhere where there's fine detail is going to be kind of ruined. Why? Because it's not feathered because there's no attention paid to those things. So let me show you how we circumvent that a little bit. Okay, so here we are was selected. You really need to just take a second and go around the image. You'll see little things like this collar. You see, the color was a little too close to the background, but there's enough there to where I grabbed my quick selection tool. You can still do that. Just make a quick round around the edges of the image and make sure that, like this little bit of here, right here, you see all the little hairs that it's missing and stuff like that. I'm gonna teach you how to get those a little bit of here, right here. A little bit of here, right here. All that stubble there. Okay, All that looks pretty good, right? Good. Solid lines on everything. Okay? I feel good about that. Year. Still looks kind of jacked up. Let's get up there. What's going on with that? Here? No, that's just is here. I was I was supposed to You supposed to laugh at that? I appreciate you laughing and rejects the rest of you. All right, Cool. So let's let's do this. Now that we've got our image selected, roughly selected. See how easy it is to do when you shot it correctly? You got the right amount of contrast around the edges now were gonna go above and beyond to the point that other people will not be able to go because they don't know this trick. And this is a trick I learned from Ah, good friend of mine, Richard Sturtevant, who is one of the masters of Photoshopped compositing. And the first time I saw him do this, I had to go back and watch the video, like five times to just to make sure that I saw what I was seeing. And this is a trick that's been around for a little while. So it's not like, uh, you know, a revelation for some of you. Some of you will already know this, but we've got the quick too quick selection tool still selected right here. Okay, You got this little button up here that says refine Edge. I want you to hit that. Now, these air settings that I kind of put in you're gonna want to find your own little groove. But basically, these air a good place to start. You know, um, I don't recommend this smart radius. I wouldn't really use it or the decontaminate colors. Make sure that those a run selected. But if you go down here, uh, to the selections, just taken note of those numbers and write those down, that's actually going to be a pretty safe place to start And member, once you've set your numbers in and it's you find out what works for you. Remember to check this This They just added a photo shop, like, two versions ago where you can actually, when a dialog box open up. You could tell it to remember the settings. And this is something that why didn't they think of this earlier? But they finally did do that. And you won't have to put those in every time. Just make sure that says, remember settings. Now, right up here, you've got your view mode right now we're called Were on what's called a reveal layer. Okay, so let me show you what that means. That means that you no longer see the marching ants selection I just made, but it's still there. Your view mode, Aiken viewed in marching ants. I can see it as an overlay. I can see it on black. I can see it on white. You can see what your image is gonna look like. Cut out with the settings that you just put in there, which is really cool. Now you can see it is black versus white. And this is where you start to really see how bad that cut out will be. If I just go ahead and hit started, put it on a new layer. Okay, so I would say start on a reveal layer. You gonna zoom in? Okay, now what? You get. Is this brush the refined radius tool. Okay, this is where we're gonna do the rial magic of cutting stuff. How? Bring that refined radius brush tool over here to the hair. Right. I want you to see it in the white. On black. You see how chunky garbage E that looks? Go back to reveal layer, grab a little bit of this background that we're trying to get rid of, Okay. And then I want you to just so to take a small brush and just paint the edges of where you want to eliminate that color from. And I watch this. You see the detail? I'm going to do it again. See all these little hairs right here. Go like this to see the detail. We lost a little bit there. Go back. Let me go. Okay, that's that. Reveal their appear. Grab this. Just a sample. Just a team starting to teach the the brush what I'm doing, You start to see that. These are gonna come through. See? Now you can start to see that it's actually gonna look like hair when I cut him out so you can actually do it in larger swaths if you like, like so then intent. And you see, now we've got the detail in the hair around there. Is that cool? So what we've done here, essentially is we have used our quick selection tool, Teoh make a rough grab of our image and because of the way we photographed it and we got this contrast over here between the background and the person, it's gonna be really, really easy for the for the quick selection tool to know what to select. Okay, so what we've done now that we've selected this, is that we have come to the point now where we're gonna have to go and do some fine detail work, which is where we get into refine edge. So what this does is your adjusting the edge. I'm telling you that I wanted to smooth the edge out a little bit. I wanted to feather it. This is what's gonna make it look not cut out to making the edges just a little softer and friendlier, even on the ones it was really easy for it to find. You want to just mm smooths edges just a little bit. And then the contrast. Keep that about eight or 9%. And then shift edge will bring that selection in just a little bit just on the off tents that there's, like a weird highlight or something that's around the edge of your with me. And so this is going to do that globally all the way around the selection. But I have these to contend with all these little hairs right here. OK, so I'm going to use my refine radius tool. And I thought, using the view mode on reveal layer and I'm just going to go in there, which you can use select by r and K will show you the black on white. This is what you start with. It just is gonna chunk it up and make it look really kind of generic around. The hair is one is the area where you see the most problems in doing these sorts of extractions. So if you grab on the reveal air, grab a sample of that background that you're looking to take out of the detail, let it learn a little bit, and then you just go around the edges just like so you guys ready to say Well, okay and Now, if I've done this right, if we look at this on black, that's pretty good. Get it on white. Good. And we look at it on its own layer, and I've got all that hair. Looks like I might be feathering a little too much. So let's bring that feather back. Just a touch here, Okay? And let's look at that again. Get that contrast up a little. Look at that on white. There it is. A feather in a little too much. Look at it on black. There you go. So what I've got is I've got a little natural sort of around there from the light, but you've got all the details in the hair. And here's the other thing you can use it for. If there's a beard, it works just the same way. But just a little bit of stubble I'm not gonna worry about. So then we're gonna hit, okay? Pull it out to a new layer boom. And we've got a really nice extraction. Let's zoom in to take a look where you got all these details in these little hairs all the way around his head. How cool is that? See that? It's although you can see through his hair into that clear backgrounds. Pretty well, huh?
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