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stallion
Very Respected Poster
Joined: 22 Jan 2005
Posts: 203
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 Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:49 pm Post subject: Photoshop Tutorial: 2 quick methods for cutting girls out |
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Method 1: Polygonal Lasso
0.) Here's the image I used for this method. I recommend you download and open this pic in Photoshop to follow along for practice.
1.) Let's get started. After opening the image, unlock the background layer by double clicking it in the layer panel. It will ask you to name it, just hit okay to use the default, "Layer 0." On the left, click and hold over the Lasso tool to change it to the Polygonal Lasso. That's our tool of choice.
2.) Zoom in to about 300% and scroll down to the tip of her shoe. It's a good place to start. Click on the tip (about a couple pixels INSIDE). Move your mouse around a little and you'll notice a straight line from where you clicked to the mouse pointer. Move it along the edge of the shoe a little and click again. You'll continue 'tracing' around her entire body this way. Now, since your working with straight lines, you'll wanna click a lot in order to make your trace smoother.
3.) Notice how I trace around her body and hair, etc. Do this along the edges of her body until you reach the point where you started. Your last click should be where your first click was.
4.) After you last click, your trace should automatically convert into a selection like this.
5.) Now many times there will be more 'holes' that you'll need to cut out in addition to your initial trace. Here's a small hole in the hair that we still need to take out. With the Polygonal Lasso still selected, go to the top and select the icon for "Subtract From Selection."
6.) Cut out the hole in the hair and you'll notice that it takes it OUT of your selection. It should look something like this.
7.) Now from here there's multiple things you can do. For the purposes of this little tutorial, invert your selection. See image.
8.) If you hit delete now, you should get something like this. If what you want is hard edges around the girl, then this is good. My 'tracing' in this example could have been much better, but I did a pretty quick job just so I could show you how to do it.
9.) Now if you want 'smoother' edges, then I would suggest feathering the selection. For this image, 2 pixels is a good number. Hit ok.
10.) In this image I applied the feather (to the selection) then I hit delete like I did in step 8. Notice the 'fade'.
11.) Here's what it looks like feathered.
12.) Compare and see what you like.
Now back in step 7 I had you invert your selection. Instead of doing that you could always just 'copy' your selection then 'paste' it over another image. And if you like the feathering effect then you can always do that before you 'copy.' Either way, now you have a pretty decent cut-out of the girl hopefully.
Last edited by stallion on Tue Apr 11, 2006 11:26 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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stallion
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Joined: 22 Jan 2005
Posts: 203
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| Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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Method 2: Extract (Great for Hair!)
0.) Again, here's the base image to work with.
1.) Unlock the background layer just like in the method above. Get your picture to fill the screen if you like (view actual pixels). Make sure you have the (only) layer selected then go to Filter>Extract.
2.) Use the highlighter tool on the top left. Now in ONE click, draw over the edges of the girl. It's okay if it's a rough job and you mess up. Just make sure the edges are covered. Your highlighter stroke must be complete, meaning there can't be any gaps from one end to the other. Also, make sure you have the detail of the hair that you want to keep covered with the highlighter.
3.) Now you can hone and fix your bad highlighting job. LOL. First, use the eraser and thin out the highlight over the fine edges of her body. The goal here is to make the highlight as thin as possible while still covering both sides of the edge. With the hair, it's a little different. Just make sure to cover from the solid part of the hair to the outer edges of the loose detail. After you get your highlight how you want it, then fill in the rest. Select the fill tool that's located between the highlighter and the eraser and click once inside the highlighted area to fill it with the fill color. The fill tells Photoshop that this area is to be kept intact.
4.) Hit ok and your girl has been extracted from the image. Yes, it's a little rough, but that can be easily fixed.
5.) In order to touch up the edges better, you're going to use two tools. First, go around the outer edges using the eraser to get rid of the residual pixels in the white area. If you happen to cut into the girl with the eraser, don't panic. It's okay, because the second tool you will use is the 'history brush.' It's located between the brush and the gradient tool. If you still can't find it then look at the eraser. Move up one icon and then right one icon and that's it. The history brush restores the image back to it's original condition. So use it to paint on the INNER part of the girl to get rid of the rough spots. Keep switching between the eraser and the history brush to continue refining the edges. Once you got it how you want it, you're done. Add in a background layer BEHIND this one and you're on the right track to making a cool wallpaper (or whatever). Here's mine, after doing some basic touching up.
Let me also mention that it might be a good idea to combine the two methods. You could use the polygonal lasso for the body and defined edges, then use extract just to keep the details of the hair. In fact, I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. ;0) |
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GrumpyOne
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Joined: 26 Dec 2005
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Location: Grumpytown
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| Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:08 am Post subject: Thanks for the tips |
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| I'm going to have to try your suggestion on the hair. I tend to use the magnetic lasso tool to extract high contrast area, but hadn't thought of trying this. Thanks. |
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mistermandingo
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Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 3625
Location: Married-so-semi-retired
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| Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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Sweet post thanks very very much!! Dont know how I missed it ??
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A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. |
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Gemini37
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Joined: 11 Dec 2005
Posts: 613
Location: UNITED STATES
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| Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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Very helpful tut...thanks.
-GEM |
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Triple X
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Joined: 16 Nov 2005
Posts: 310
Location: In the middle of nothing !!!
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:03 am Post subject: |
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thanks for the hint, i wil try this with my designs
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Ivorbiggon
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Joined: 19 Jun 2006
Posts: 210
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Useful post, thanks |
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csx
I'm probably spamming
Joined: 01 Aug 2007
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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| thank you for the tutorial, very helpful! |
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Aldeberan
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Joined: 09 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 1:04 am Post subject: |
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Thanks a lot for this, I've always wanted to be able to do this but was too lazy to look for a good tutorial, but now I have stumbled upon one!  |
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kumori69
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| Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:47 am Post subject: |
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| Useful post |
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brix67
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Joined: 11 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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| very useful indeed thanks |
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roderickinorbit
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Joined: 04 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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sixtenb
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Joined: 27 Dec 2006
Posts: 518
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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All pictures has been deleted but I still got a grope of the idea.
This can probably be done in PSP, too? Probably not quite as professionally looking result, but I have to try.
Usually I just cut out a rectangular area, but this sounds interesting. |
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GrumpyOne
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Joined: 26 Dec 2005
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Location: Grumpytown
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| Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 1:56 pm Post subject: Standard Photoshop tools |
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Both of these tools have been part of the Photoshop family for some time. I don't know if they are included in PSP. They work quickly, but depending on the size / quality of the image, they do have their limitations. I don't use the first method (lasso tool) at all for images, the second one - extract filter (plus a lot of work with the history tool, eraser tool etc.) works quite well.
I find that the lasso tool is challanging to control, and yes, there are ways of "fixing" up the piece you want to extract. Even with a wide "feather" setting, I have not had a lot of luck using it on extracting figures. Hair, fingers and toes and other fine details tend to not look good. You tend to get the same look as when you cut a figure out of a magaz1ne. I do use it for some of the backgrounds that I do.
The extract filter is quite nice, but you do need a very contrasty image for the good edge detection to work well. By itself, I have found that it does not do a very good job on the Teenfuns images - too small to hide mistakes, lots of artifacts from the high compression that was used to create the jpgs, etc. There is a lot of hand work, using the eraser tool and the history tool, but you can get a pretty decent image. Hair and fine details still take a lot of work.
If there is any interest, I could try to recreate tutorials showing what Stallion has recommended. |
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in4apound
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Joined: 23 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:46 am Post subject: |
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| Just found this post thanks for the tut and for useful comments which followed |
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