Extracting People from Backgrounds

STEP ONE
Start by opening your image in Photoshop

STEP TWO
Get the Quick Selection tool (W) from the Toolbox,and set the brush size to roughly to about 60 pixels.  Use the  left ({) and (}) bracket keys to increase or
decrease the brush size.  Begin painting on the background to start defining the selection.  I often find it easier to select the background
and then invert the selection.  Just paint all the way around the subject to get the full background.  Press CTRL + and/or CTRL - to zoom in and out,
and then make your brush smaller or bigger while painting in closed ares, like in between arms and other parts
of the body.  Some areas you don’t need may still get selected,  If that happens, just press-and-hold the
Alt key and paint back over the undesired area to remove it from your selection. You want the selection
to be as accurate as possible, but it doesn’t have to be perfect because that’s where the Refine Edge comes in.




STEP THREE
Once your selection is made, go under the select
and choose Inverse to select only the subject now.


STEP FOUR
Go under the Select menu and choose Refine Edge. First, under View Mode, change the View to pop-up menu
to On Black, so we can easily see the subject edge.  Feel free to select any other vies that help you.
In the Edge Detection section, set the Radius to 1, and then select the Refine Radius tool to the left.  
Start painting around the edges of the subject to refine and soften the selection.  This is especially helpful with
hair and it does a very good job.






Next, in the Adjust Edge section, you can boost the Contrast to tighten up the selection.
Finally, in the Output section, there is a Decontaminate Colors checkbox.  This removes any edge color picked up from the original image.
Turn this on, set the Output to pop-up menu to New layer with layer mask


STEP 5
This is where you can refine your selection precisely.  You now have a background layer and layer one with a mask (the black and white area of the layer)
Turn off the background layer (click on the eye of the background layer) you should have a checkered background.
Next, you can paint on the areas to remove some of the undesired areas and also to bring back some of the selection that was missed.
In the toolbar set the foreground and background color to black and white (type D and X) ( as seen below)  select the brush from the toolbar, then click to open the
brush preset picker (top left end corner), pick a soft brush.  This will feather your selection.
Click on the mask (the black and white area of the layer)  Set your foreground color to white (type D and X) white is to reveal and black is to conceal.
Start painting over the areas you want to reveal in white and paint black on the areas you want to conceal.  
Once you have fine tuned your selection, it is ready for extraction.
 

Wow ... I expected steps by steps , never like this .... wow ... thank you for taking time like this ...

Wow wow and wow! Thank you so much Lucille for the time and effort you put into this. Its so appreciated!

Cant wait to try this out. Its so different from the way I learned, with the lasso only, removing and/or adding with the picture zoomed in ALOT to be as precis possible. Michelle showed me really quick how much easier this method is.

Thanks so much!

Love xxxx

No problem ladies! Glad I can help.