(upbeat music)
- Hi there, this is Ramesh,
thank you so much again for joining in for this video,
I truly appreciate it.
And you know what?
I'm so proud of you for making it this far,
and I'm actually so sure that you're doing fantastic
and brilliant as always.
Now, although we have talked about layer masks,
and the basics of it, and the fundamentals of it before,
like what are layer masks, how to use it, what do they do?
And throughout the course of lessons,
we have actually used layer masks.
Although in this lesson,
we're gonna dig a little deeper
and learn the advanced techniques of layer masking
which are essential for compositing.
You know what?
I'm super excited for you
because we have tens of examples ready lined up
that you're gonna have fun with.
So without any further ado, let's get started.
Back at the magical world of Photoshop
and the very first thing that we're gonna focus on
is Select and Mask, and it's a vast topic.
Now you might ask what is Select and Mask?
Well, it's a dedicated dialog box in Photoshop actually,
that's gonna help you make better selections,
that's all there is in a nutshell.
There are so many features and sliders and settings
inside of it that we're gonna break it down
into several examples to understand
each and every one of them.
So let's start with our very first example,
let's say you have to put the subject
on a different background, right?
Put a subject on a white background for the fun of it.
How would you select the subject?
Well, you can spend the time to do it with the pen too,
but it's gonna take you a very long time,
maybe you're gonna grow old doing this.
But with the later versions of Photoshop,
the Select Subject feature has gotten so much better
that all you have to do is to click a button.
So select one of these three tools,
the object selection tool, the quick selection tool,
or the magic wand tool.
And once you select one of these three,
at the top you will see Select Subject.
Just click on that and wait for Adobe Sensei
to work its magic AI right there and have a look.
It does a pretty good selection
and gives you a great starting point.
Now, this was a difficult one,
because have a look at her dress,
there are so many frills and things going on flying here,
there are so many objects in question,
still Photoshop did a pretty good job.
Now, if you try to create a mask out of this
by clicking on the Mask button,
and then let's put a white background at the back.
You will still see that there are some shortcomings
that we need to take care of.
Do you really think that we need to use the pen tool
to just select these areas,
or the lasso tool or any of those tools
to manually do it?
No, that's why we have Select and Mask.
We can get into that dialogue box,
work with the settings here and there a little bit,
and it will take care of the rest, all right?
So let's start it all over again.
Now you can go directly inside of Select and Mask,
you don't have to make a selection for it,
or you can also make a selection
and go inside Select and Mask,
I'm gonna show you both ways.
So if you go inside Select and Mask,
just click on any of the selection tools, right?
The lasso tool, the polygonal lasso tool,
any selection tool we'll do,
and at the top you will see Select and Mask.
You click on that, you get into that dialog box.
Right now, the view is Onion Skin,
We're gonna talk about views very soon.
So Onion Skin is the view
where the objects that are selected show up
and the objects that are not selected don't show up.
The layer beneath shows up,
I actually dropped my pen, sorry about that.
Okay, so now in here as well,
let's say you wanna see how it looks on a white background,
you select On White.
Now we have not made a selection of anything
so nothing shows up.
So inside here as well,
you can click on Select Subject
and it will automatically select the subject for you,
or that's one way of doing that.
Let's hit Cancel right now.
The other way is you can also make a selection
and then get it inside Select and Mask,
that's absolutely up to you.
Now, as you learned,
there are two ways to get inside Select and Mask,
so in this case,
I'm gonna make a selection first,
and then go inside Select and Mask.
So once we have the selection,
let's click on Select and Mask to get inside it.
Now, there are lots of tools and buttons
here and there everything to help you make a selection.
Let's understand views a little bit,
we're gonna talk about that in detail later,
but for right now,
let's understand that if you choose On White,
and if the opacity is at 100,
everything that is selected will show up,
everything that is not selected will be absolutely white.
If the opacity is at zero,
everything will show up irrespective
of whether an area is selected or not.
As you slowly and gradually begin to increase the opacity,
you will notice that the unselected areas, if that's a word,
I hope you understand, the areas that are not selected
will begin to turn white, all right?
Now, there are these areas
which are a little bit complicated.
What if we could say to Photoshop,
"Hey, Photoshop, just focus on these areas
and fix it for me, these other areas
which are complicated areas."
Before that you have a tool right here
that is the refine edge tool,
just select that, all right?
And paint over the complicated areas
and Photoshop will fix it for you.
Now it's doing the processing in the background,
now, as you release the mouse
you'll notice that it does a pretty good job.
Similarly right here, try to paint this,
make the brush a little bit smaller,
and try to paint over this area,
and as you can see what a soft edge it gives to the hair
and it basically fixes it.
Now, there are these areas.
Now we cannot paint it out or tell Photoshop,
because if we try to do it,
it'll also remove parts the hand,
it might not work perfectly,
but in this case is that it actually did.
There are also other tools
that you're already familiar with.
There's this object selection tool, choose that,
choose the lasso mode,
and we want to tell Photoshop, alright,
this area is not a part of our a mask,
not a part of our selection.
So you can hold the Alt key or the Option key,
and it turns to minus.
So you can roughly make a selection around it
and tell Photoshop, and it does the such a clean job.
So similarly can do the same thing right over here as well,
you can make a rough selection around it,
and Photoshop does it automatically,
isn't that pretty sweet and neat?
All right, now, once we have it,
there are some other areas that you can work with it as well
here as well I feel that we need to tell Photoshop,
"Hey, this is not a part of the selection,
so let's get it out."
All right, there we go.
At the bottom, it has gotten it perfectly.
Now there are these areas which just don't look right.
There are some things that you might have to manually do it,
and for that, we have the regular brush right here.
So first of all, let's make it a little larger.
So it just works just like a regular brush on a mask.
So if you want to erase something,
you would hold the Alt key or the Option key,
turns into minus, and then just paint like a regular brush.
Like when you paint on a mask with black,
it's the same thing.
If you want to add something by default, it will be a plus.
Anyway, let's make it a little smaller
and erase these areas, I'm so sorry about that.
Just erase these excessive areas
and then we can move forward with whatever view.
Now we can take all the time to do it,
I'm just gonna try the refining tool right here
and see if that fixes it.
No, that doesn't.
Let me just try to paint right over here.
No, it doesn't.
We have to manually do these things sometimes.
So let's just erase it.
You can also correct it later,
it really doesn't matter for the complicated areas.
And once you're satisfied with it, you can hit Okay.
Now before you hit Okay, you have a lot of options.
How do you want to output it?
Do you want to output all of this as a new layer,
the whole thing just go be on a new layer?
Do you want to create a layer mask?
Do you want to copy the whole layer with the layer mask?
There are lots of options.
So in this case,
I'm just gonna choose the layer mask and hit Okay.
And it creates a simple mask out of it.
So now, let's put a solid white background beneath it.
Now for the brush areas, you can just manually do it,
just zoom in, it's a little faster
and more convenient that way.
Just erase it, paint to a black, and there it goes away.
There we go, this is how I would do it in cases like these,
make it a little softer and there you have it.
A brilliant mask, such complicated subject,
such a complicated background,
yet we pulled it off with the help of Select and Mask.
Now, with that second example,
let's talk about the views inside Select and Mask.
Now, I love to talk about features
and how things work in Photoshop.
But sometimes it might get monotonous,
so that's why we focus on creating actual things.
So for the second example, why not create something fun?
It's gonna be easy,
let's create something fun to understand views.
All right, so let's put a bright new
colorful full background behind it.
Again, we're gonna use the same principle here,
click on Select Subject,
it's gonna make a pretty good selection.
Now on top of that
you can just make adjustments here and there,
subtract areas, we're gonna deal with that later.
But for right now,
just click on the mask button.
Now we have it.
Now we can also go inside Select and Mask
after creating a mask.
There's no hard and fast rule that you cannot do it.
Anyway, so let's put a background under it.
So I'm gonna go to my finder or Explorer,
and drag and drop this colorful background,
really goes in with the great headphone music
listening theme right here.
Now let's make it a little larger
and put it under the subject.
Now we have it, this is looking pretty cool.
How about we add some lines and streaks?
That would look amazing, isn't it?
So to do that, you're gonna choose the brush tool,
choose hard around pressure size, all right?
So what happens is with that brush
with the pressure in your pen,
the thickness of the brush changes.
If you're using a mouse, no problem,
you can also manually draw it with the mouse,
you can also create it for the pen too, it's up to you.
This is just for fast work.
On top, just above this background we can create a layer,
we have to copy it at the top later,
but for right now let's do it there.
Make the brush size a little bit larger, color white.
All right, and then you can just bring in
something like this and do something like that.
Now you cannot see it fully,
we need the ability to see it fully,
plus when we do it,
our hands might be a little shaky.
So increase the smoothness all the way to 100,
that's a great cheat.
All right, momentarily,
you can just decrease the opacity of the subject, all right?
To see where the line is going,
and then let's just try again,
and drop it right here and draw a line like that,
looks like a fancy line, right?
Now, let's increase the opacity of the subject
all the way high.
Now what we can do,
we can make a copy of this
by pressing Control or Command J,
and place it at the very top.
Create a mask by clicking on the mask button,
decrease the smoothing and let's choose
the soft round brush, all right?
Now done the mask black by pressing Control or Command I,
or you could also create a negative mask.
So when you didn't have a mask, let's delete the mask,
you can hold the Alt key or the Option key
and click on the mask to create a negative mask,
lots of ways to do the same thing in Photoshop.
I want to reveal the line right over here.
So paint with white right here,
that's it, looking pretty cool.
If you want the line to go from under her hand,
you can also do that and get creative with it,
so we can do something like that,
that's up to you, I just had an idea,
I was not gonna do that, but that's such a cool idea.
Anyways, so let's just paint it carefully right here.
(upbeat music)
You can also create a shadow later,
you know, there are lots and lots of possibilities,
add some shine and glow to it,
there's so much you can do.
Anyway, once we have that super cool line,
let's talk about masks here.
Alright, let's select the mask right here,
you can choose any of these selection tools,
and then let's go to Select and Mask.
And inside of it, let's talk about views.
Now, as you scroll up,
you will see the section called Views.
Now, one of the most important ones is Onion Skin.
Now Onion Skin actually shows you how it's gonna look
in a layer structure.
If the transparency is all the way to 100,
any area that is selected will show up,
any area that is not selected
will be absolutely transparent,
and any layer which has beneath that, will show up,
make sense?
All right, it shows the complete layer structure,
and those hollow areas
you will definitely see the layers
which are beneath it as you regularly see in Photoshop,
so it makes sense.
So as you work on your image,
Onion Skin makes the most sense
because it can actually see in real time
how your selection is turning out to be,
and how it is going to look in the new background.
The next one is simply marching ends.
So it'll continue to show you the marching ends
of the selection, it's simple as that.
Overlay, if the opacity is at 100,
every area that is not selected
we'll turn to red or any color you choose.
Makes sense?
All right, simple stuff.
If the opacity is at zero,
everything will show up irrespective
of what area you have selected.
Right now, you can see the background
because you already have a mask,
if you didn't have a mask, you wouldn't.
So if I hit cancel right there,
and if I took it away or if I deleted it,
if I only had an active mask here,
so let's say I turn all of it off
and let's just click on Select Subject,
I only have an active selection,
I'm sorry, not an active mask.
If I only have an active selection,
and it doesn't matter,
you can turn all of that on and let's go to Select and Mask.
All right, now, if you chose to view marching ants,
you would see the marching ants.
Now in this case, it is going to be a little different.
Now, when you go ahead and choose Overlay,
since you are starting out with an active selection
and you didn't already have a mask in their setup,
if you decrease the opacity,
you even have the original image,
you couldn't see the background, right?
So that's why for me, it's a better way to go forward.
So when you create a selection,
get inside of Select and Mask.
Don't create a mask and then get inside it,
it can get a little complicated.
That way, sometimes you cannot see the original background
if you choose to go with overlay on some other modes.
All right, on black, same explanation.
If the opacity is at 100,
everything that is selected will show up,
everything that is not selected will be black,
opacity zero, everything will show up.
All right, so you need to choose accordingly
as to what you're going for.
So I'm gonna go with Onion Skin,
because that's gonna give me a real time preview
of how your image is gonna look.
Now, let's decrease the transparency
and let's see which are the areas that we are missing.
To see it more clearly you can choose on black as well,
that's also a good way to see which areas you are missing.
Okay, so there's this area,
so you can also choose this tool,
this is the quick selection tool
and using this we can easily add to your selection.
And as a conceit does a pretty good job.
(upbeat music)
All right, that area is added.
You can also use the object selection tool,
it's one of my new favorites actually these days.
So I know that this is not a part of our selection,
so I'm gonna tell Photoshop, all right,
this is not there, and it does a good job.
Also, this area kinda messed it up a little bit,
there we go.
So you can take all your time to fix all of this.
Now we know that all of this is not a part of the selection,
so we can take our time to just subtract it, just like this,
and as you can see, it did a pretty good job.
Oh, here, it kind of messed up,
so with the help of the refinement tool,
just paint over there,
and there you go, it fixes that,
and most of it is pretty good.
You can actually go ahead and try to remove all that
by the object selection tool
and just tell Photoshop that's not a part of it,
then you can manually do it later,
and there's this area again, right there,
I can tell Photoshop is not a part of it,
though it didn't work because that area's too small anyway.
So hit Okay once you're satisfied
and choose what you wanna create with it.
So definitely we wanna output it as a layer mask,
hit Okay, now we have a layer mask,
now I can see what's going on right here.
Now, you can also just select the mask and then improve it.
You can take the brush and manually do it right here
for the areas it missed out on.
So there you go, that's how to create such a cool thing,
and that's how views work in Select and Mask.
So keep in mind,
if you have already created a mask
and then get inside Select and Mask,
and then if you are let's say on Onion Skin,
it's gonna show up perfectly,
if you decrease the transparency,
it's gonna show up the original background.
However, if you're working with Overlay,
and then if you decrease the opacity,
well, it's not gonna show you the original background, why?
Because you already created the mask.
So I always recommend go in inside of it
with an active selection.
I hope everything is clear so far.
Let's move on to the next one.
So with the release of Photoshop 2021, the latest version,
Adobe added a new button.
Before we talk about that button,
understand that that when you're working
with a human subject,
and then when you click on Select Subject
inside of Select and Mask,
it does a pretty good job refining the hair.
If you feel that it needs more refining,
there's a button for it.
If it didn't do any refining for a fur on an animal,
you can click on that button.
And that button is called Refine Hair.
It automatically detects all the fur and the hair
and refines it.
So in this example, we have a wild cat
and let's say you want to create a dramatic black and white
version of it.
So first of all, we need to make a selection.
You can directly do it as well,
let's get inside of Select and Mask,
and click on Select Subject.
Again, Photoshop has become really good at it.
Now we want to see it on a black background,
so click on, on black
and increase the opacity all the way high.
And we want to refine the edges,
it did a pretty good job actually.
You can click on refine hair, see how it performs,
and as soon as you do that have a look at this area.
It didn't do all of that,
but have a look at all of these areas,
let me show you the before and after.
So here's the, before not refined at all,
here's the after, just look at the difference,
pretty good isn't it?
Now on top of that,
you can of course choose the refine edge tool,
do and make it even more better.
The painting right there, refine it even more, right?
I'm gonna make the brush a little larger
and paint all over the fur and the edge areas.
Photoshop missed out on some areas,
no worries, they're just gonna paint right here,
any areas that we have left out, that's all right.
And these areas already look pretty good,
that's been done these areas,
they look pretty good at the bottom as well.
Oh, missed out on that arm right there.
limb I must say, there you have it, looks pretty good.
Now we want to output it as layer mask, hit Okay.
Now we have a pretty good mask,
now some areas look a little off,
we can improve that,
but it doesn't really make sense
because any way gonna have a black background.
So choose solid color adjustment layer,
we're gonna be talking about improving
and working on masks later,
but when it's not needed, why do the effort?
All right, now we wanna create a dramatic black and white
version of it.
How do we do that?
On top of this,
we can create a black and white adjustment layer.
So in here you will find black and white.
Now you can do all of the adjustments here, yellow,
you can control the brightness of it,
you can control the brightness of the reds,
choose what you like,
the greens and the cyans, and the blues and the magentas,
see what kind of changes each of them make.
So I'm gonna increase the blue,
nice highlight right over there.
Great, now to make it even more dramatic,
we need to add a curve adjustment layer
and just make it a little darker like this.
There you go, you see the drama right there?
I absolutely love it.
Now you want more drama?
No problem, add one more curves.
And there's gonna be a little extra, okay?
And even make the highlights a little darker
and really make it darker, okay?
Now select a mask, press Control or Command I,
you take the brush, take a very soft round brush,
make it a little larger like this
with white as the foreground color,
just paint away on the edges on
and on the right hand side
especially to give it that traumatic look at the bottom
as well a little bit.
So you can take your time to work on this,
but this is such a cool way
to create such a dramatic portrait of this wild cat.
There you have it my friend,
let me share with you actually
the before and after.
So this is the, before this is the after,
there you have your dramatic wild cat.
Now the next example is just for you to understand
the different masking and refining properties
inside of Select and Mask.
Now, there are two ways the refining algorithm works.
Actually, we can say that there are two algorithms,
and based on the image we are going to choose one of them.
Those are color aware and object aware.
First of all, let's try with this image.
Let's say you want to select the subject
and put it on a new background, right?
You're not gonna completely do it,
but you'll get the point what we are trying to do here.
Okay, so let's first of all
get inside of Select and Mask directly,
and click on Select Subject directly, all right?
Inside of it so that you can see the difference.
Now let's zoom into the hair.
Now, definitely we need to paint with the refine edge tool
to see more of a difference.
But there are two things right here,
Color Aware and Object Aware.
Now Color Aware is an algorithm
which you will choose when there is contrasting backgrounds,
make sense?
When there is a contrast of lightness or color
in the subject from that of the background,
you're gonna choose that option.
So even if you hover over it,
it's gonna tell you best choice
for simple or contrasting backgrounds.
So simple backgrounds, solid backgrounds,
and if they contrast with the subject, great.
So what do we mean by contrasting?
So if your subject has a black hair,
and your background is also dark,
that's not a contrasting background.
All right, if your subject has black or dark hair
and the background is bright or light or any light color,
it's a contrasting background, right?
If your subject has red hair and the background is also red,
it's not a contrasting background.
If your subject has red hair and the background is blue,
then it is a contrasting background.
So for simple backgrounds
where you could clearly tell the difference
between the hair and the background,
for that you will choose Color Aware, hit Okay,
and you will notice it does a pretty good job,
better job, actually.
So if you choose On White,
you'll be able to see the difference.
This is Object Aware,
and this one is Color Aware.
See more hair shows up,
so if I try to paint a little more,
maybe you'll see the difference,
it's a very minute difference here,
you might not be able to see it.
Object Aware, all right?
Not much hair shows up,
this is Color Aware, a little more hair shows up right here,
for simple contrasting backgrounds.
Let's hit Cancel.
Now in the next image,
you'll be able to tell more of a difference.
Now, when you have complicated backgrounds
or backgrounds that it is hard to tell the difference
between the subjects hair and the background,
things are a little messy,
then we have to choose Object Aware.
Photoshop uses its algorithm to identify the object
instead of the contrasting things, okay?
So in this case, we're gonna go to Select and Mask again.
And again, we're gonna choose On White
and definitely click on Select Subject.
Now, when you do so, if you have Color Aware selected,
you will notice that it also select part off the wall
at the back, actually the pillar the back.
I think it was a pillar, right?
Yes, it was a pillar.
Anyway, so let's increase back the opacity.
However, if you choose object aware,
as I said, for complicated backgrounds,
it's a better choice.
It takes the pillar away to an extent,
it's not an excellent selection,
but choose one of these wisely
depending upon your situation.
If you hover over Object Aware
it tells you best choice for hair or fur
on complex backgrounds.
But you know what, set all of this explanations aside,
the best thing to do
is that when you work on your selections,
try both seeking which one works better for your image.
Sometimes it's a complicated background,
and color aware works well,
and I don't know for what reason,
maybe there is some reason.
So my suggestion is try both see what works better for you.
Let's move on to the next one.
In the next example,
let's talk about a magic secret formula
to get smooth and crisp edges in a selection.
So here we have an apple, a green apple.
Let's say we wanna make a selection of it.
If we try to go inside Select and Mask,
you can also choose any other method to make a selection
the quick selection tool, the object selection tool,
it's up to you.
I just click on Select Subject,
it's a one-stop shop for everything,
and it does a pretty good job actually.
Now, we're gonna choose a black background,
it will help us see things clearly.
And as you can see,
it kinda mess things up here and there.
So let's improve the selection,
even if we try to improve it,
there's lot of bumps and just ups and downs here and there,
it's just not as smooth.
So first of all, let's choose the object selection tool,
and with the help of lasso,
we are just gonna add until Photoshop.
All right, this is the part of the selection.
There you go, let's go ahead and add it,
it kind of is messing up anyway.
There's a lot of bumpy road in there.
Let's go ahead and tell Photoshop.
All right, this is also part of your selection,
it's too bumpy, man.
Anyway, I'm just gonna take the brush
and just do this area right here pretty quickly.
Anyway, so now let's...
It doesn't matter how it looks right now,
lust get a basic selection in there
with the help of the object selection tool,
again, we have to tell Photoshop,
all right, this is a part of the selection
selected properly.
You can also use the quick selection tool
right here as well to add to it,
but we have gotten to a pretty good spot.
Now let's increase back the opacity.
Still, it's so bumpy and up and down
uneven, it just doesn't look cool.
The secret is this,
now you can done on edge detection,
but it has never turned out to be great for me.
It might work on hair or fur,
but it's still, for me it has been a bad experience.
So what it does is that when you increase edge detection,
Photoshop just applies refining
to a particular thickness that you choose right here.
So let's say if you increase edge detection radius to 15,
so it's gonna refine for a thickness of 15 pixels
around the edge,
and as you can see it does a very poor job here.
It can also turn on smart radius for it to get smart,
but it doesn't get smart, it gets dumber in most cases,
maybe with the later versions of Photoshop,
maybe the version you're using right now
as you're watching this video,
maybe two, three, four, five years down the line,
it has gotten a little better but right now it just sucks.
Anyway, in here,
there are these important sliders
to smoothing sometimes work
when you have a relatively good selection
or masking right there,
you can just increase moving just a little bit.
And as you do,
it tries to smooth this all out
and it does a pretty good job.
It isn't bad,
it does a pretty good job of smoothing things all out,
but we want extra smoothing.
See, these little ups and downs,
if you increase the smoothing,
you will notice that all of that will go away,
it does a pretty good job,
but the one that I am sharing with you
is a little trickier, and that is feather.
Feather is something that we increase
to kind of make the transition
between the areas that are selected
and not selected smoother.
But in here, we're gonna use it a little differently,
so it keep on increasing the feather,
and just when you begin
to see the ups and downs go away, stop.
So it's still showing up, still showing up,
still showing up, still showing up,
and it's gone now, right?
Right now it's so blurred
that you cannot tell the ups and downs.
So we're gonna go over the value of 37, all right?
Now here's the great part, increase the contrast.
Now what is contrast?
Contrast is simply making the brights brighter
and the darks darker.
So this is a mask, right?
So what that will do, it'll make the edge sharper, right?
So where it's transitioning,
any area which is closer to black will become black,
any area which is closer to white will become white,
and eventually make the edge sharper.
So if you increase the contrast
you'll notice the edge starts to become sharper.
See that?
I'm gonna increase it even more,
there we go, all the way to the right.
Decrease the feather a little bit,
and there you have it, have a look at it,
it's so smooth, it's like, everything is fixed right here.
If you want to shift the edge a little inside or outside,
you can do it,
you can shift it inside or outside,
but I'm gonna leave it at that,
maybe minus one,
you can leave it at that.
The only caveat here of using this technique,
the feather and the contrast combination
is that it makes everything smooth.
Have a look at this.
It was supposed to be a corner here, but it becomes smooth.
We'll take care of that later.
But right now the largely the apple is smooth
and that's what we are concerned about,
that is a simple area.
So once you're done with that,
you can output it to a selection,
let's hit Okay.
And once we have a selection output,
we can just work with it, it's not a big deal,
we can use the object selection tool
and just add these extras, just like this.
These extras are added,
subtract this from right here, okay.
Now there are these areas,
just subtract these from right here.
All right, we can work that up actually
with the help of the lasso,
we can just take that away from right here.
You can also do it with a brush, but you get the point.
Anyway, we can just simply take that away,
that's a small area,
I don't recommend using the lasso tool that often,
but it's just a small area, it's not too much.
All right, click on a mass button, now we have it.
Now while we are doing that,
why not create a pretty cool design
because it's all about having fun, right?
So I selected the crop tool,
just extended it a little bit at the top.
Now let's give it a background,
let's choose a solid color adjustment layer
and choose a green, bright greenish color
and put it at the back.
Still doesn't look interesting,
so what do we do here?
We double click on it and we pick a color
from that of the apple, right?
This color works really good.
Hit Okay.
Now we want the shadow from the apple,
how do we get the shadow?
Make a copy of the apple.
Now in this copy,
we will just reveal just a shadow,
or you can just delete the mask,
just the shadow area is what we want, delete it.
Hold all the Alt key or the Option key,
click on the mask button.
This creates a negative mask,
you take the brush white as the foreground color,
just reveal the shadow area, that's it.
Just the shadow area, no more than that.
Otherwise, if you reveal all of the areas,
it might create black wanders sometimes.
Now we only want the darkness from the shadows.
So change the blend mode to multiply, okay?
If the white areas are not so white,
you might have to add some levels or curves to it
to make the whites absolutely white
so that it goes away.
Otherwise, what happens is
if the whites are not completely white,
other areas will become dark too.
Anyways, so now you have a pretty nice shadow,
and I also feel the bright areas of the apple
needs to be a little more greenish.
So we will create one more layer,
hold the Alt key or the Option key,
click on the line between these two layers,
now we will take green as as a sample and paint here.
Now I know what you're thinking,
this isn't looking right.
We only want to project the color,
not the brightness levels, nothing else.
So just change the blend mode from normal to color,
and there you have a little color there.
So we can paint all around these areas,
now it looks a little better.
Now, of course, this is too much,
that's decreased opacity to about 50%.
There you have some color in there,
now that we have a little bit of color, it looks good.
Now, if you want some different colors on the sides,
you can also do that.
Just stay on that layer,
take the brush,
take a sample and just keep painting from right here.
Just keep experimenting to see which colors look good
and start painting.
Anyway, now that we are here,
let's write something interesting.
So why not just let's write apple.
So take the text tool,
and just write apple right there.
And let's make the text a little larger,
and there you have it pretty nice text with apple on it,
and just paste it in the center,
there we go,
bring it a little down.
All right, that looks all right.
And there you have it, a pretty nice photo.
Let's decrease the opacity of this one as well to 50%,
and there you have a nice poster, pretty cool, isn't it?
Let's move on to the next example.
But the next example, we'll cover something
that bugs Photoshop users all the time.
And that is this,
no matter how good Photoshop gets with masking,
or no matter how good you get
with masking each and every single hair,
there is one thing that's gonna bug you.
And that is color cast, make sense? No?
Let's say you have your subject captured
on a blue background or a green background
as in this example.
You created the most perfect mask for the hair,
everything looks cool.
However, after you created that mask,
even though it's perfect, there's still blue in her hair.
Even when you put up a new background,
a green background or a black background
or white or whatever, there's still blue in her hair.
Why is there blue in her hair
even when you have the perfect mask?
The reason is color cast.
The hair is so thin
that it takes up the color of the background.
Sometimes the background has so much light in it,
it just throws in the color into the hair and just gets,
it just seeps in so much.
And for that, we have a feature inside of Select Subject
to improve on it, let's discover the same.
So again, let's get inside of Select and Mask
and click on select subject.
And as you can see, it did a good job.
Now, if you put a black background,
and I'm doing it so that you can see this clearly,
you will notice
that there's a lot of blue in her hair, right?
So if you choose the refine edge
and try to paint over here as well.
Now I'm gonna try to choose color aware there
because it works good in these cases, all right?
As you can see it really worked good.
Now let's make the brush a little larger
and paint on some of these areas to improve upon it.
Just make sure everything looks perfect here.
So I'm doing it little faster.
All right, let's just focus only on the hair,
there's still a lot of blue.
So how do we take care of that?
Well, the way we do that
is by checking decontaminate colors.
Just check that and Photoshop takes care of it.
Now it might not look all right,
because it's a black background and it looks flat.
If you choose a white background,
you'll be able to see that it really worked.
So this is without it, you might see a lot of blues in here.
This is with it, once you check it,
see, the blues just go away.
All right, how does it work?
We're gonna discuss that later,
but it cannot work on the same layer.
If you do apply it on the same layer,
it just won't because it's just grayed out, it cannot.
It has to create a new layer.
It has to create either a new layer
or a new level of the layer mask.
So let's go ahead
and choose a new layer with the layer mask.
It's not the perfect solution, it might not always work.
There are better ways to do it, like blend modes,
and we're gonna talk about that later,
where we use the multiply blend mode,
but this might also work in many cases.
So in this case, if you were working
with a white background, this would work, all right?
Now, what does it actually do?
First of all, let's just check on it,
let's choose new lab with a net layer mask,
and you can choose the amount,
that the lower the amount actually the better it would be,
so slowly and gradually increase the amount
and just stop at what amount works best for you.
So if 54 works best for you, stop there,
don't go ahead and increase it all the way to 100.
You can do that, but the more amount you have,
the more artificial it's going to look.
I'm gonna choose the highest amount right here
to show you how it works, let's choose 100.
All right, now, as you can notice, no more have the option
to create the mask on the same layer,
the mask is created on a copied layer.
Why does that happen?
If you turn that on, everything looks all right,
let's put up a white background first, just like that.
Now you would notice that when I tear off the mask
by holding the Shift key and then clicking on the mask,
sorry about the kid shouting in the background,
actually it's evening time
and kids are actually playing outside in the fields.
All right, now, have a look what it does.
It just looks like a mess, doesn't it?
So what it does, this data digs the colors
which are inside it and expands it outside.
See, it has expanded all of that,
it keeps the mask same,
but it expands the color and limits the mask.
So that way all of that blue goes away,
so this is the original with the blue in it.
So it takes the colors which is inside right here,
expands it outside and keeps the mask limited to the hair.
So that way, what happens
is that the brown color is extended.
Make sense? No?
Let me try to make you understand this
by creating a new document,
it doesn't matter what the size is,
and let's create a circle for your understanding.
So let's say this was the head, okay?
And let's give it some color.
So I'm gonna give it a little bit color of the skin,
something like this.
All right.
And let's fill it on a brand new layer.
Let's say it had some hair as well,
so we're just gonna take the brush
and paint in some brown hair right here.
Okay, now due to the color cast,
what happened was that the blue of the background
just creeped in a little bit, all right?
So this is what happens, so what Photoshop does
when you check decontaminate colors,
it takes the colors from the inside and expands it,
keeping the mask the same.
So in this case, it would, let's say, create a mask.
This is the mask, the mask helps as a limiting factor,
and what Photoshop does is that, let me just unlink it,
Filter, liquefy.
It just takes the color from the inside
and just expands it like this.
It just takes away all of the blues.
All right, it keeps the mask the same, all right?
It's okay.
See, now all of that is gone,
but if you don't have the mask
you'll notice that it's a mess.
The same thing is right here.
This is the original image, it might look all right.
If you don't have to mask,
you'll notice that it has taken the color from the inside,
expanded it, kept the mask the same.
So that's how decontaminate colors work.
I don't recommend using it always, but if it works,
just check it, if it works, great.
For your example, you can always go with it.
Now let's talk about an extremely essential technique
in the world of masking,
and we have basically discussed it before,
but let's discuss it again as a refresher.
And that is the technique of double masking.
What do you mean by double masking?
Well, when you have double masks,
it's called double masking, as simple as that.
All right, so first of all,
let's say you wanted to add some highlights to the subject,
maybe a rim light to the subject.
And you took a lot of time to create a mask for it,
so let's go ahead and create a selection of the subject
by simply clicking on Select Subject.
I'm just doing that to save time.
You can take all the in the world to do it with a pen tool
or any of your favorite tools,
take the time to create a perfect mask.
And it also does a good job.
Now, once you have an active selection, we learned before
that with a selection active,
if we create an adjustment layer,
that adjustment layer is created
with a mask off that act of selection, right?
So let's say we create a curves adjustment layer,
and then we just brighten it up like this.
All right.
Now, one of the ways of just keeping it in the highlights
is just selecting the mask, taking the brush,
and then with black as the foreground color,
just erase the extras.
Something like this, okay?
But there's a problem with that.
What if you erase something like this
and we want to get this area back,
you want to add highlights back into this area?
If you try to change the foreground color to white
and paint it here again,
well, it just leaks out, it leaks into the background
because now you have destroyed this mask,
this mask that you meticulously created,
or even if you created with Select Subject,
you destroyed this mask,
you would have to create this mask again
and then erase it again.
So instead of dealing with all that,
what if we had dual masks
so that this mask was not disturbed? Yes, that is possible.
So let's go back to where it was to how it was
when we had just this mask or the curves adjustment layer.
Now you put just this one layer in a group.
Now Photoshop layer group can have just one layer,
so just select this layer, press control or command G.
And you know what are the advantages
of a group of font from let's say organization purposes,
a group can have a mask, so you can create a negative mask
for this group or you can also create a positive mask,
that's absolutely up to you.
I'm gonna create a negative mask
by clicking on the Alt or the Option key
and click on the mask to create a black mask.
Now you can just paint with white right here.
Now you have two mask,
this is the mask that we are working on,
and we have this mask as well,
and the effect of the curve so only show up
in the intersection of the white areas in the mask.
Makes sense, any area which has white in common,
that's where it'll show up, so if I draw a line right here.
Now in this mask, the line goes all throughout,
but what is common between this mask and this mask?
Just this area, right?
So the effect only shows up in this area.
So now you're working with two masks
and you're not disturbing this mask, all right?
So that is the beauty of it.
Now we can take the time
to promptly decrease the flow to about 20%,
and then with white as the foreground color,
start adding some highlights here.
All right, really add some dimension to this photo.
Take your time to do it, right?
You can add some here, some highlights here and there
just to make it very, very interesting,
see that little highlights,
and you'll be a little more here.
All right, a little bit here and there.
So now we have added little bit of highlights,
now to make it even more realistic,
why not just apply blend depth?
So double click on the right hand side
of the curves adjustment layer,
take the slider from the left to the right.
Now, it is harsh of course if we do take it that way,
you can always hold the Alt key, the Option key,
click on the slider to break it apart
and break it all the way apart to something like this.
And now you have some lighting working for you,
so here's the before, here's the after,
just a little bit of lighting to make it even more exciting.
Here's what you can do, you can create a copy
of this curves adjustment layer
by pressing control or command J, or you can create
another curves adjustment layer at the top.
Now for this, we're gonna bring it down,
all right, like this.
Now we'll copy this mask right there by holding the Alt key,
the Option key, clicking and dragging it right over there.
And we don't wanna darken
the areas that we had brightened, so we'll put in a group.
So with that curves to select it,
press control or command G to put in a group.
And then we'll just copy the same mask of this group
to that one, hold the Alt key, the Option key,
click it and drag it right over there and drop it.
And we want the opposite of this mask,
so press control or command i,
so all of the other areas are now dark.
Of course, this is too much,
so you would decrease the opacity
and slowly and gradually increase it
to something that would work good for you.
So in this case, we would go 40.
Actually, I won't even choose that high of a value,
but just to show you a little difference,
here's the before little flat,
here's the after a little more dimension here and there.
You can also add some light from the left as well,
so if I go back here, maybe we can add a little more light
in here as well, let's increase the flow,
just a little more light here, that's up to you.
Just a little ambient lighting here, there we go,
it makes it a little more interesting.
There we go, a little bit light here, so there we go.
Here's the before, here's the after,
it adds a little dimension to the image.
Now we did it pretty quickly,
there's a lot of possibilities to it.
You can add beautiful rim lighting using the same technique.
You have already covered it before,
it's the double masking technique,
it is where we use two masks,
and only the intersection of the white areas
is where the effect shows up.
Moving on to the next example, and here we will learn
how to remove halos using blend modes.
Now, in many cases, you might want to change the background
to something that is way different
from the previous background.
When you have an image with, let's say a bright background
and you wanna change it to a dark background,
there's bound to be halos.
No matter how good of a mask you make, there will be that
because it just seeps into that object.
How do we deal with them? Easy.
You can deal with it using blend modes.
So in this case, let's say we wanted to change the skyline,
of course you can use the sky replacement technique,
but still you would want to learn how to remove these halos.
Okay, first of all, let's make a selection of the sky.
Now with the later versions of Photoshop,
you will have this, just go to select and then sky.
It automatically does that for me,
isn't that pretty amazing?
That's gonna take a little while for it as we wait,
and it did a pretty good job, click on the mass button.
Now it did just the opposite, let's go back.
Now, it has selected the sky, we don't want the sky,
so we want to create a negative mask.
So hold the Alt key or the Option key
and click on the mask button, it'll take away the sky.
Now let's bring in our new sky right here,
just drag it and drop it and do Photoshop right over here.
All right, let's make it a little larger like this
and put it under it.
Now in this image,
the light is coming from the right hand side,
but in our sky, the light is coming from the left,
so let's flip it, click on it and then flip it horizontally.
So now we're gonna make it a little bigger,
keep it just like this, and it suits a little more.
Now, as you'll notice,
there are a little bit of halos around, can you see that?
A little bit of halos, see?
It just isn't looking right, all right?
So how do we remove that? How do we take care of that?
Let's just use simple logic here.
We know that in a scene, there can be nothing brighter
than the source of light, we know that, right?
It's just not possible.
The source of light is going to be the brightest.
Now that source of light can be in the frame,
can be outside the frame, it doesn't really matter,
but the fact is nothing can be brighter
than the source of light.
So let's assume that in this case,
of course, why assuming in this case,
the source of light as the sky.
So whatever these tree branches are doing
are actually darkening it.
So what is the blend mode which darkens, multiplies,
so that's what we are going to use.
First of all, make a copy of this.
Just keep the copy right there,
we can turn that off for the moment,
and change the bottom one from normal to multiply,
not fixes all that, see, it fixes all of these halos,
everything just goes away.
Look normal had a lot of halos,
as soon as you change to multiply, everything fixes,
but there's a problem with multiply,
can you guess what it is? It is simply this.
Since it is a blend mode, since it is a projection,
every change that is going on in the background sky
shows up in the trees
and everything that is there in the foreground.
Have a look, this cloud
was going passing through from right here,
it shows up in the trees.
Even in here, these clouds are passing through,
it's showing up in the branches.
So how do we take care of them?
By simply blurring that area.
So make a copy of the sky, all right?
Now, completely blurred by going to filter,
blur, and then Gaussian blur.
You can blur it a lot so that no details are there.
So I'm gonna go with about 400, all right?
We don't want all of the sky to be blurred.
Only the areas of the trees where we had little details
of the new sky showing up.
So we simply copied the mask here.
So hold the alt key or the Option key,
click and drag and drop the mass right here,
so only those areas which falls into the trees are blurred.
So it is now fixed, so without it,
you'll see that every detail, the clouds and everything
will show up in the trees, if you turn that on,
the trees are fixed now and it begins to work.
Now we want some details back,
so you want the normal one turned on, okay?
Now here's where we will use double masking again,
we want to bring back some of the areas.
So press control or command G or the Alt key
or the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on Windows,
Option key on a Mac, and click on the mask button.
And we want to bring back some of these areas.
So take the brush white as the foreground color
and make sure it's a soft round brush,
and we bring back some of these areas at the bottom,
there you go, no big of a deal.
Okay, looks pretty darn cool.
Now, if you want, of course,
you can create a curves adjustment layer
and, you know, take it to the top first of all,
or maybe you can just keep it inside the group.
So what if I want to do apply curves only to these areas?
So I'll just start in that area, there we go, okay?
And if I darken that area, it looks good,
and now what we want to do is we want to add
a little bit of yellow to it, so let's go to blues
and just decrease the blues and let's go ahead
and go to greens and decrease the greens,
now it's looking more like it,
let's go to reds and try to increase the reds,
and there you have it, we are getting somewhere with this.
So there you go, beautiful sky replacement,
everything is merging perfectly.
And I only wanted to apply this cast to this layer,
not to other areas, see how red it's getting,
so you can hold it the Alt key, the Option key,
click on the line between these two lines
so that only applies to that,
and as you can see, these areas just don't look nice,
so we have another, you know, mask right there.
So select the mask,
take the brush blank as the foreground color,
and you can take it away from certain areas like this.
I would decrease the flow to about 10%.
This area is just getting too much red,
so just to raise it from this area
and any area that is getting too much red.
Yeah, and that's fine, there we have it,
beautiful sky replacement,
and that's how to take care of halos using blend modes.
Now let's learn how to improve a mask manually.
So let's say you created a mask,
and you just want a fine tune on it.
Is there any guidance that's gonna help you,
which areas are missing out
and which areas you need to paint back in,
and which areas you need to erase?
Is there any guidance here?
Yes, there is a guidance actually,
so only have to do first of all,
let's go ahead and create a mask,
you can use the object selection to hear as well.
First of all, we can just click on Select Subject here.
It makes a pretty good selection of the subject.
Now with the help of the object selection tool,
we're just gonna add this handle area right there,
and it should do a good job.
Well, it missed out the bottom,
so let's try to add that again.
And at this area, wow, kinda messed that up,
it was a pretty clean edge,
Photoshop should have catched that,
but it's missing it again and again, no matter what I do.
So anyway, let's make a selection
of what we can at the moment.
There you have it, this is all right,
this is not the perfect selection, but that's okay.
So click on the mask button.
Now let's create a nice background for it,
so I'm gonna choose the color CV201F.
I had a red color right there, put it in the background.
Now you can use a curves adjustment layer,
put it down, or you don't make it black like this.
Okay, and select the mask of the curves adjustment layer,
take the brush and take a hard, round brush,
just make a dab.
Black as the foreground color,
fluent opacity are at 100, just to have ones just like this.
You can just set it according to the burger, like that.
Now, once you have set that, you can just select the mask,
open up the properties of the mask and then just feather it.
Ah, there you go, that looks okay.
So this is 398, let's go for 500.
That looks good, maybe we'll go for 750,
how do you feel about that?
750 looks good, see how wonderful this looks now?
So now we have a nice background for the burger.
Now, how do we know which areas are missing out,
which areas we need to paint?
So in here, just go to the mask,
and this is the technique, my friends.
Just open up the mask properties and decrease the density.
Density is like the opacity for the masks.
If the density is zero, it'll act as if there was no mask.
If you slowly and gradually start to increase the density,
you will begin to see the mask,
and the mask becomes more and more opaque.
If the density is at 100, the mask is at its full potential.
So if you decrease the density,
you will see that these are the areas which are missing out.
So now you can go here, take the brush,
make it a little smaller and just fine tune it.
So we need to paint these areas in white,
let's change it to a soft round brush,
and we have to paint back these areas.
So that's how you go about improving a mask,
so let's say if there are some areas missing out right here,
this area looks all right,
this area missed out a little bit,
so you would paint that back in.
Is there any other areas missing out?
So this area missed out a bit,
or you can paint that back in right there.
So the more you decrease the density,
the more you'll able to see which areas you have missed out.
So as I can see this area, as we completely missed out,
so let's increase the density a little more,
and let's see if we missed out something here.
So we missed out bits and pieces here and there,
so we can paint that back in, so you get the point.
This is an area we painted, extra, extra areas are selected,
so paint that area with black.
So there you go.
So you can take all the time on the world
to continue this process, and that is how you do it,
that is how you improve upon a mass,
that is how you use Photoshop's guidelines
to figure out which areas you need to work on.
And the secret slider for this is density.
Now let's learn how to clean up masks using blend modes.
And it's pretty simple.
Now here I have already arranged the layer for you.
So we have a nice background and we have some branches.
So if you want to mask this out, so how do we do it?
Lots of ways, we can use color range here,
select color range.
Now you can choose one of these like highlights,
and then it only selects the highlights,
so you can increase the rain slowly and gradually.
Just when you begin to see only the highlight selected,
you can stop right here, that's a pretty good selection.
Now you can choose the selection preview to black matte,
or you can also choose a white matte, that's up to you.
You can invert the selection
so that it can see the selection in real time.
I'm gonna choose black matte
to see how much of it is selected.
Or you can control the range.
You can also control the fuzziness,
fuzziness as how smooth the transition is.
So I'm gonna increase the range a little more.
It is pretty good, it does a pretty good selection,
most of the areas are selected.
We'll decrease the fuzziness a little bit
to have more in there, but for that,
there can come a little problem.
So this is a good middle point
for not a lot of the background is selected
and only this is selected, it's a good middle ground.
All right, once we have the selection,
we click on the mass button, there you have it.
Now this looks okay, but not all of it is selected,
some areas missed out a little bit, as you can see,
if you just see the mask,
you hold the alt key or the Option key,
click on the mask, just gonna see some areas
that are missed out, so how do you clean that up?
You clean that up the blend modes,
and overlay specifically in this case.
So you take the brush, first of all,
let's worry about the areas which are inside.
For the outside you will choose, do just the opposite.
In this case, we don't need to paint outside,
it's black, it's absolutely fine.
So now change the color to white.
If you painted with regular white, with the brush,
yes, you can fill it, but it can leak outside easily, right?
No matter how much you try,
it can give it a little bit leak in here,
and it will take more time.
Instead, change it to overlay right here.
Now, when you change it to overlay,
you can set the flow to about 50% or something.
You can also choose 100.
Now, when you paint, let's use 100
so that I can show it to you.
It will only paint over the areas and cover the areas
which are closer to white.
No matter how much I paint on black, nothing is happening,
but as soon as I paint inside, see, it covers that,
isn't that pretty cool?
Though similarly,
you can just work fast in here using this method,
see that easily covered all of those areas, see that?
It won't paint on the black areas,
but be aware of that, if you do too much,
it might just bring up halos, so yeah, be careful of that.
So try to paint inside, but it's a great tool,
see, it just won't go outside,
it'll fill that area properly, it just won't go outside.
It's one of my favorite ways to clean up masks in Photoshop.
See how nicely it cleaned that up,
if I tried to do it with a regular brush,
you would have to just adjust the brush so much
and still it would leak, see how it's leaking? See?
So if you chose overlay, it would be so simple,
you can go with a larger brush here
and it won't leak, pretty cool.
And if you want to cover extra areas,
just paint one more time, there you have it my friend,
just paint one more time right here and you got it covered.
Now, once you clean that up,
let me do it pretty quickly for you.
These are the areas which are missing too much.
There you go, one more time.
I'm doing it doing a super fast job here.
So the only paint on areas which are closer to white,
it won't paint on black areas, it just won't.
Now, if you choose black as the foreground color,
the opposite will happen.
All right, this looks good.
Overlay is a great way to clean all of this mess up.
Now let's say this is the mask,
this looks perfect at the moment,
but let's say a part of it was by mistake,
we selected a part of it.
Let's say, let me just do it something by mistake, right?
Something like this inside the mask,
let me change the brushes to normal, something like this.
Or something like this was selected, all right?
And you wanna remove the outside.
Now this is darker, this area is a little darker,
so we would change the foreground color to black,
change it to overlay, right?
Now here's the magic,
just the opposite you'll see happening.
Now, let's just increase the flow to about 100 back again.
No matter how much you try to paint inside with black,
it just won't paint.
However, these are closer to dark areas, right?
So it'll just take that away, it just won't paint inside
no matter how much I try.
If you just go too much,
the edges might become a little too sharp,
so be careful of that, so it'll take that away,
it will just not go inside,
which is a pretty cool feature in my opinion.
All right, so that's how you clean the mask using overlay.
Now, after you're done,
do not forget to change it back to normal,
otherwise, the next time you're using a brush,
you'll just be scratching your head,
figuring out why is it just happening?
Anyway, we gonna use the same technique here
to match that with,
to match the branches with that of the background
and that is simply this.
You make a copy of the background, you blur it out
by going to filter, blur, Gaussian blur.
You blur out of a very large number you can choose here.
Then you can copy the mask similarly right here,
change the blend mode of this one from normal to multiply,
and there you go, it's also matching,
it's matching pretty well,
it's working pretty well and I love it.
So that's how to do it, my friend.
So that's how you can use blend modes,
so with the brush to clean up the masks,
just keep in mind after you're done,
don't forget to change the brush blend mode to normal.
Last, but definitely not the least,
this is one of the coolest techniques to remove halos,
and we're gonna do this using the smudge tool.
You might be thinking how in the world
we can use the smudge tool for halos.
Well, if that doesn't ring a bell,
we have already covered the basics of it
in a previous tutorial.
I wanted to include it again so that it's refreshed,
so that we can learn it
in the context of advanced masking techniques.
We talked about it before in the smudge tool video,
so you can go back and watch that
if you're interested in one more example.
All right, first of all,
let's make a selection of the subject, beautiful subject.
Now here's what we're gonna do,
just click on Select Subject for now.
We'll take care of the rest later,
and click on the mask button.
Now let's bring in our new background,
so I'm just gonna drag this texture
and shop it right over here.
Let's make it a little larger right here,
and bring it under the subject.
Now, as you can see, there are halos right here,
and the edge is very, very sharp,
the edge is also very sharp right here.
If you look at the subject,
it's captured with a shallow depth of field,
take a look, these areas are soft,
this is a very shallow depth of field,
these are getting blurry,
and also with such a shallow depth of field,
how can the background be so sharp?
The edges is so sharp and with so much halos.
First of all, let's get rid of the halos.
You select mask, you choose the smudge tool,
let's set the strength to 50%.
All you have to do,
now, keep in mind, the mask is selected, not the subject,
just push in the mask, that's it.
It also blurs it a little bit for you.
That's what I like about it, just push in, that's it.
There you go, fixed.
That's how easy it was.
Sometimes for the hair as well, we just need to push it,
and then you can also drag it out
to make it a little bit smoother.
So you can do things like that
to make things smoother as well,
so just push it in a little bit.
There you go, we might have to take the time
to fix the mask area around the face,
but you get the point what we are trying to do here.
Here as well, we need to push it in a bit.
Okay, now I feel that in these areas,
the edges are just too sharp,
so we need to blur it out,
and we are blurring out just the edges.
So choose the blur tool
and just increase the strength to 100,
make sure the mask is selected and just blur it.
Blur this here, just paint over it.
And as you do, you'll see the edges are blurred.
There we go, now we might have to go back to the smudge tool
and push it in a little more right here.
There we go, just look at the original, see how it is.
Okay, now we also need to blur the background
because it just doesn't look right,
so let's go to filter, blur, and then Gaussian blur.
Not so much of course, so let's go for about 16.
All right, this looks good.
No one doubts that it can definitely do
some color correction here and there,
so we can choose a color lookup table at the very top,
and we can choose something like edgy amber to all of it.
So let's decrease the opacity slowly
and gradually increase it
to something that would look good for this one,
so let's go for 35 or let's go for 30, it looks good.
I'm gonna make the background a little more contrasting.
So just create an S right there to create that contrast,
gritty contrast, and whoops, I missed something there.
(bright upbeat music)
There you have it my friend, there you go.
Now to make it even more exciting, you can create some,
let me just show this to you, we did this before.
Create a curves adjustment layer,
bring the right most point down like this,
and as you bring it down to add more contrast,
you can create a point on the left-hand side
and create a curve like this.
Now select the mask with black as the foreground color,
just tab, press control or command D,
just arrange it according to her face,
and once you set it up just like that,
you can just select the mask, open up the properties,
and then in the mass properties just increase the feather.
This is just for fun.
Now I think 450 would look good in this case,
and there you have it, this such a beautiful background,
I hope you like it.
So there you go my friend, so these are some
of the most essential masking techniques for a compositing.
Going forward, these techniques would be the building blocks
of your composites.
Now keep in mind, these are not just the only techniques.
There are some basics as well.
So if you haven't watched the previous video on layer masks,
watch it first and then watch this one.
I hope this lesson helped you, I'll see you on the next one,
till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.