Introduction
There are no simple ways of selecting if the potential selection is complex, Time is the key!Once you learn the basics of selecting (which hopefully after reading this page, you will!) the key to a good selection, is patience and time - its simple, the longer you spend, the more accurate your selection.
Quick Selection Tool
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| The Quick Selection Tool |
The quick selection tool is the tool I start with, this tool analyses the area around the cross and inside the cirlce.
A few swipes of this tool will usually select what I want, a rough version to clean up.
As you can see the Quick selection tool is very efficient, if I was to spend more time and zoomed in,
I could make the selection perfect however when subject colours are very similar to the background colour - because the way the Quick Selection Tool analyses the area inside the cursor and selects similar colours from the area around the cursor,
it can have trouble distinguishing between the subject you wish to select and the background - so far that reason, I prefer to clean up my selection using the Quick mask.
Quick Mask
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| Double click the Quick mask tool to ensure that 'Selected areas' is selected |
Once the quick mask tool is selected, Select the Brush tool, What ever you brush in with Black will be selected, The longer you spend doing this, the better and more accurate the selection will turn out, Use White to Deselect. (for more information on masking see my tutorial here!)
When selecting edges of the subject, I change the hardness to around 60% because I find it makes it look more realistic when being pasted into a new Image.
Once the Quick mask tool is clicked again the selection appears like this:
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| This selection took me roughly 32.65 seconds, If I spent more time doing it, the selection would be a lot better. |
There are various reasons for selecting, in fact I think its the most important part of many techniques involved with Photoshop.
Tips
Tip 1. Never drag the quick selection tool out of the area you are wanting selected.
Tip 2. Start with the largest sized cursor that will fit inside what you want selected, then proceed to make the cursor smaller and select as much as possible.
Tip 3. Hold 'alt' to Deselect an area, so if the selection leaks onto the background, simply hold alt and brush over the area you want Deselected.
Tip 4. When using the Quick mask, changing the colour of the overlay/opacity of the overlay will help to see what it is you are selecting.
