Your Favorite Method for Selection

[Baadil]

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to find out what your best/favorite/quickest method is for selecting skin in Photoshop. As everyone know there are several ways to create selections, I am interested in your best method. :-) At time you want to select all the skin on the body and leave other details not selected like Mouth, eyes, eyebrows, hair etc etc. So far I have my favorite set to Quick mask. What's yours?:lol:

[CyberPet]

Depends on what needs to be fixed. Color selection is nice, but I find it sometimes very "ruddy", so I usually use the polygonal lasso tool often and then add some feather to the selection (usually copy the selection to a new layer, so I'm not ruining the background layer).

[Baadil]

Thanks Petra. It seems no one, but us, makes any selections here. :-)

I use Poly Lasso as well. I mostly use it while I am in Quick Mask. I use to clean up straight lines. I am still trying to find a better way to make selections though. For example, using only Quick Mask does not allow me to exclude a few hair on the face easily. Same goes for Poly Lasso tool.

I have never been able to get a decent skin selection using the color selection. Either it doesn't selec enough or selects too much. And lines are never smooth either.

Thanks.

[Mernya]

You might want to consider using the extract tool if you are trying to get hairs and stuff. Otherwise, go into a Channel and see if one of the channels makes the skin area stand out more. Then select it there. This is a great way for selecting a sky from the surroundings, too.

[PhotosGuy]

The polygonal lasso tool & I put it into a tut, Selecting areas in PhotoShop (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39994).
I save the selection as a channel. I might transfer it to a Layer Mask & touch it up there.
I really like Layer Masks 'cause you don't remove anything from the image, you just hide it.
I have never been able to get a decent skin selection using the color selection. Either it doesn't selec enough or selects too much. And lines are never smooth either. Baadil, try processing a dupe layer, adding a Layer Mask to it, & just paint in/out what you want to keep/hide.

[Baadil]

Thank you Frank for the reply.

Here is a sample of the kind of image I am talking about. I could think of two different kind of selections that I might want o make for this image. First, I might want to change the background. With hair all over, it is a tough selection. Seconds, if I want to select all the skin, hair come into play here as well as the dress (so called).

Thanks.

[PhotosGuy]

I suggest that you try to make life easier on yourself by shooting on an appropriate background if you visualize the need to process after. The brown hair against an almost brown, dark background will not be easy to extract, if you can at all. Seconds, if I want to select all the skin, I have never had to select all the skin. I'd process a dupe layer, mask it, maybe blend it, then reveal the parts that were appropriate. Much easier!
Good luck!

[Baadil]

hehe. Good suggestion but I do not think it will work for me. I typically take pictures for what they are, pictures... Once I look at them,,, 1 or 2 stick out and say convert me into a portrait and do some post processing.... :-) This is when I open up photoshop....

As for duplicating layer and masking, I do that currently. But, it is still extremely hard when it comes to area individual strands of hair or skin in between the dress in this image. You really have to select each individual strand so you don't lose anything. Typically I select all the skin if I want to apply some filter and I do not want it to affect the other items like background, clothes hair etc etc.

[RAitch]

Well, with so many ways to create selections, I don't have a favourite. I use them all.
In fact, I would say that I tend to stay away from any lasso tools since they create such a harsh edge that's not desired (even with feathering).

For pictures with people, I usually start with the channels. I look at the channels and find which one has the most contrast between the object I want to keep and the ones that I don't. From there, copy it to a new channel and use levels/curves to try to enhance the contrast. Then you can even use burn and dodge (works great with hair) and the paint brush to produce a greyscale layer. Then CTRL-click on the layer to load the 'mask' as a selection.

Sometimes, you'll have to mix selections. For the example above, the red channel would probably produce nice contrast between the arms/dress and the background. The hair might have to be done separately using another method or at least with different level settings... and maybe using another channel.

In order to get fine selections, you need to use image data. Selection tools would not produce nice results in images like this (obviously).

Another really cool tool is the pen tool. It's so powerful and most people decide to stay away from it. Learn to use it and unleash the power!!!

Most of the time, I'm not doing composites... so I'm not trying to lift a part of an image onto another one. In cases like that, you CAN'T use a lasso tool.
I'm usually just producing a whack-load of layers and using masks with a soft brush. I especially use that method when sharpening images. I mask off the cheeks and foreheads plus the background for sharpenning.. especially when it's nicely blurred. Why would you sharpen stuff that should be out of focus??

The same thing goes for layer adjustments. Sometimes you don't want certain areas affected. Instead of using selections.... MASKS MASKS MASKS.

Also, I never use the actual quick mask. I just use masks... and if I want to 'see' the mask, I just SHIFT-ALT click on the mask to see it blended with the image. I think you can also ALT or SHIFT click the mask to see it... but then you don't see the image which is useless.
I only ALT-SHIFT click when I'm worried about detail. Usually, I just make passes 'blindly' with my brush until it looks good.

[Baadil]

Thank you RAitch. I haven't used channels for selection. May will I will have to learn and apply that method.
As far as Pen tool, do you know of any good tutorials for using Pen tool for selections as well as other stuff?
One last questions, does anyone know of a way to create multiple selecttions and then combine them? For example, if I select face skin with one selection and save that selection, then create another selection of, may be, arms etc and somehow combine both selections so that I can work on both selections together.

Thanks

[RAitch]

Thank you RAitch. I haven't used channels for selection. May will I will have to learn and apply that method.
As far as Pen tool, do you know of any good tutorials for using Pen tool for selections as well as other stuff?
One last questions, does anyone know of a way to create multiple selecttions and then combine them? For example, if I select face skin with one selection and save that selection, then create another selection of, may be, arms etc and somehow combine both selections so that I can work on both selections together.

Thanks

Pen tool... I remember finding a lot using Google... but some were pretty crappy. Find and read a couple and it'll be obvious which ones will help.
Learn how to add points, move them (CTRL drag), delete them, stroke the path with a brush, fill your selection, etc... It's really cool because you can add a couple points and curve the line so it matches.

One really cool way to use the pen tool is to apply an artistic>cutout to your image with something like 6 colours, then use the pen tool to draw around the colour edges. Fill the areas with an eye dropper selected colour... bada-bing, bada-vector-art.

For multiple selections, if you have several channels to use as selections, you can CTRL-click one channel then SHIFT-CTRL-Click the other ones to add them. I'm not sure, but I'd assume ALT-CTRL-clicking might remove the second selection from the first.