Lessons
Class Introduction
04:41 2Composite Examples
10:58 3Set-Up for Photoshoot
11:17 4Live Shoot: Model Placement
15:20 5How to Choose Images for the Composite
04:59 6Introduction to Selections
08:32 7Selections Q&A
09:40 8Start Post Processing in Photoshop
03:27Lesson Info
Introduction to Selections
All right. So let's do let's do kind of our preliminary phase of selections. Teoh, get us started here. Here's what we're gonna do. The quick selection tool is kind of become our go to selection tool inside a photo shop. Here's what I'm going toe share with you guys. Um, probably you've probably all heard of a selection tool that that somebody has sworn by. So this just happens to be the one that I've used the most that I've had the greatest luck with. Um, if you've seen selections done with channels before, that was a really good way to make selections in 10 years ago. That's the way I used to have to make selections. It's just not what we used today. All right, if you've seen another tool over here is something like the Magic wand tool. All right again, that's a way to make selections. It had its place. It's not something I use a lot today, So there's different pools, and you may have seen different selection tools. You may have seen people say I use the pen tool to make a really pre...
cise selection, and that's good and fine, but you're not gonna be able to use the pen tool to outline her hair. We're gonna have to go to other stuff. So I think the quick selection tool is gonna be our best one, because it's basically a brush. You just brush a selection on and it snaps to the edges. All right, so you can see here. It's automatically if you take a look up here, set little plus. So it's automatically in ad mood. Which means every time that I brush, it's always gonna add to my selection. So in this case here, you could say I missed part of her hair, so I'll just go and I'll brush right up there and it'll added into the selection. Um, you know, there's a little strapped down here that we're missing. I'm not too worried about. It will probably just leave it out for for our case here. But what will happen, though, sometimes is you'll see there might be areas that get a little bit more detailed. So what I would tell you is spend the time now, all right, before we get into the next phase, which is the super detailed phase where we work on the hair, spend the time now to try to get all those little tiny areas, and it's only gonna take a few minutes. But if you look here like we miss part of this so I can just select and the cool thing about photo shop selections if you notice when it's thinking, notice how sometimes the edge looks weird. In fact, let me show you that one again because that's a good example. Watch how the edge looks weird and bumpy all right, and then I'll let go. It thinks that smooth it out. So it actually is learning as you go along here. So what will happen is like this area over here. If I want to subtract from it, I just hold down the option of the all key. Usually whenever you're brushing with some type of adjustment, brush option or all is usually always your subtract will. I said I got a little minus sign in there so I can just paint in the middle there and it'll subtract from it. Alright. Ah, same thing up here option or Alz paint in the middle there. What's cool about this, too, is is if I go to try to paint over that again. It's not gonna all snap into place. It only gets part of it. And that's because photo shop was kind of learned, like hang, You know, he subtracted from this, so he probably doesn't want to add it back in, so it really does actually learn as you're going through there. But I think we're doing pretty good. And what I'm doing here is I'm zoomed in. I'm just holding down my space. Barkey. I'm just going around the edge. Now we get over here, we don't worry about this yet. This is when we get into phase two when we start to worry about the details. What we're really just worried about in this first phase is do I have a general rough selection of everything, and I think we do. We can add a little bit of this hair back up here because we know we're gonna have to Mr Little Bit on the side There. We will question this. Sure. Yeah. You selected the person, Not the background. Correct thoughts. What's just referenced? I get that question all the time. Actually, you know, I don't even think about it, and I probably I probably do it like half one way and half the other way. It's just neither one of them. Whatever. Whatever looks, if it's if it's a person from a background. For some reason, my mind always goes to the person. And I'd start there. But Or if the backgrounds really busy in this case, it's not a busy background. Yeah, would be a faster selection to pick the non busy. You know, we have time Way might just try it. So here, I'll get through the Let me get through this. So we got her hand. Everything else looks pretty good here. I think that we missed the strap watch. I select the background, and it, like, instantly happens. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do, because we're gonna put this to the test. So when you're done with their selection, we're actually not done with it yet. We're gonna We're gonna go and make it more detailed, but you can always save a selection. If you go appeared to the select menu. You actually just hit save selection, and I'm just gonna call this one. I'll call this basic outline. Basic outline one. All right. So this is the one that will come back to when we want toe. Get more detailed with it. But let me de select, um And so let's try. Let's see what would happen here. Have another question too. While you're doing this. Yes, um, refine edge in this case, you did not. You didn't do it, user Refine edge. Do you? Sometimes where That's where we're getting too. So your question is refining Refine edge. If you look up here, you see selecting mask. So selected mask is the new version of Refine Edge. If you have Photoshopped CC about a year or so ago, they changed it from Refine Edge, the selected mask, which is good because from a usability standpoint, somebody getting into photo Shop Lake you'd never know Refine Edge was the way to work with hair and selections. At least selected masklike sounds kind of like it, but yeah, refine edge and selected Massacre Very, very similar. You'll see the new one has a couple other options in there. But the good point on that is I always do my selection before I get in there, and in the next part you'll see that we can make a selection in there. I'm gonna show you why I don't do it that way. But I always do my selection first. And then I go in there at my base selection. And so in this case you saw, we selected the background. And, yeah, that's a whole lot better than what I did before. Basically, in three clicks, I got it. So I think I missed a couple of little holes over there, but yeah, the background would have been the better to go in this. So it was actually learning moment. I did that so that you would ask that. So, um, but anyway and and then just remember. So once you get a selection, you're gonna come up here to the select menu and save it. You're gonna work on these selections a lot. They take a long time to create. Once you do that, you don't want to have to go and re selected again, so you can always just go save the selection. And at that point, I know whenever I opened up this photo again, I'm always gonna have a selected background from I can always just go select load selection and it'll load that selection backup. Okay,
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Lael
Matt is just so easy to listen to and follow, this course was particularly good to give you a well prepared framework to create a composite. Really fine step by step details on unifying the composite, creating lighting & atmosphere. His tips are clever and give great results.
Justin
The class was good for me as a beginner in this field, it covered the studio shot well and the use of photoshop, lightroom is clearly very powerful. I would have liked a segment on shooting the background particularly getting the angles correct so that the subject fits the background, just the pitfalls and must do's would have been nice. But overall I learnt a lot. Justin
a Creativelive Student
Not a big fan of this class...didn't offer much