#99 Rockwell inspiration--a question

kdotaylor

I have a question about technique. Say I have a photo with lots going on in the background. I'll post this as an example. I'm sure there's a way to isolate the foreground, turning everything in back white. Is there? If it's a simple thing, can someone walk me through the steps? (I use a really old version of Photoshop)

ghinson

I would use the pen tool to outline the sofa and the ladies. Once outlined, you right-click and convert the outline to a selection, telling it to feather the selection by a pixel or two.

In the lastest Photoshop, you can then use the Refine Edge tool to perfect the selection around intricate areas like the are.

Once selected, you can then invert the selection to the background and delete or fill or blur or whatever.

Here's a tutorial: http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials/how-to-use-photoshops-pen-tool

kdotaylor

Thanks, Greg! I'll practice that. I imagine that'll be a handy tool to add to my repertoire.

lkbart

I do something very similar to the tutorial, but since I have issues drawing around something (never could draw & tracing was iffy), I don't use the pen tool much - it just takes too long because I'm always erasing. So instead of the pen tool, I use the brush tool to select what I want, then because it never gets exactly what I want, I go in with either the lasso or magnetic lasso tool & add or remove the small areas I can't get right with the brush. After I've gotten all the edges the way I want them, I usually duplicate the layer, select inverse & delete. That leaves you with a layer of the area you selected. Then I use the magic wand on the new layer & click anywhere in the void so you get the outline of your selection, then use the refine edge tool to feather a pixel or two & delete (like what Greg said) - kinda play with it to see how much feathering works best for the image. It is tedious & the masking tools are supposed to be so great, but I never seem satisfied with what they take in & leave out!

Moving Pictures

ghinson wrote: »

I would use the pen tool to outline the sofa and the ladies. Once outlined, you right-click and convert the outline to a selection, telling it to feather the selection by a pixel or two.

Ahhah! I haven't done this in photoshop, but it's similar to InDesign, which I use frequently. I'll give this a whirl next time I'm doing a close crop... my technique is rather crude (Polygonal lasso on a layer, and the ol' delete key) and I know there's better ways I could do such things.

richtersl

ghinson wrote: »

I would use the pen tool to outline the sofa and the ladies. Once outlined, you right-click and convert the outline to a selection, telling it to feather the selection by a pixel or two.

In the lastest Photoshop, you can then use the Refine Edge tool to perfect the selection around intricate areas like the are.

Once selected, you can then invert the selection to the background and delete or fill or blur or whatever.

Here's a tutorial: http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials/how-to-use-photoshops-pen-tool

This was great, Greg! A bit tedious, but well worth the effort! Thank you for sharing this link.

SeascapeS

I have a different method~ I crop the area I want and move it onto a background (black/white, whatever), then erase the parts that I don't want. It's also tedious, but since you can change the size of the brush, you can do large areas quickly. You'd have to use an EXIF then since you'd have two different shots.

I did not do that this time for the Rockwell though.