DELETING BACKGROUND

PS QUICK TUTORIAL

DELETING  BACKGROUND

As with anything in Photoshop, there are several ways to delete the background. One way is to

use the Extract command. To do this, use Filter > Extract. Your picture will open in a new

window and you will be given a circle tool which works like a magic marker. 

First draw loosely around the part of the picture that you want to keep. Then grab the paint

bucket from the upper left corner of that window and fill in the part that you are keeping. Click

Preview there in that window et voilà! 

What the Extract tool does is to search in the green part for edges. If you need to be very

precise and there is not much contrast between your subject and your background, this may not

be a good way to do it, because it may delete too much. 

Zoom in and look at your work. If yo
ur edge is not neat enough, you can clean it up with the

extract window's cleanup tools. For your cleanup pleasure, Photoshop has provided you with the

cleanup tool and the edge touchup tool. Cleanup erases and edge touchup sharpens the edge

making a clearer delineation between your subject and its ultimate background. The cleanup

and edge touchup tools will only become visible after you have clicked "Preview". 

When you are satisfied that you have your edge defined well enough, Click OK.

SHARPENING IMAGES 

What sharpen does...

Sharpening is the detailed method of increasing the contrast between two objects, usually

isolated to the point at where they meet. What this means is that to sharpen an image, you

simply darken the lines and lighten the areas around them. If the lines are light, you brighten

them even more and darken the areas around them. This makes them stand out more. 

Unsharp Masking is the way that everyone who works with digital image processing knows to

sharpen their files. Of course the use of this ill-named tool has nothing to do either with

masking, or unsharpness. It's just a carryover from the days when an unsharp negative was

sandwiched with a sharp one to enhance edge contrast. And that is in fact what the Unsharp

Mask tool in Photoshop does, it increases edge contrast.

But, as useful as it is, the USM tool has problems, and one of these is that it also increases any

noise present in the file. Particularly noisy photographs therefore can suffer when USM is

applied.

Every photographer as well as artisans of all sorts knows how important it is to have an extra

specialty tool available for when things don't quite work out the way you expect them to.

Photoshop's High Pass Filter is one of those tools. Let's see how to use it.

High Pass:

On the Layer palette select your Background Layer and right click. Select Duplicate Layer. With

this new layer highlighted select Filter > Other > High Pass. Set the Radius to 10 and click OK.

Zoom into your image to Actual Pixels level so you can better see what you're going to do next.

Go back to the Layer Palette and select Hard Light from the left drop down.

Now go to the Opacity Slider and select a level of sharpening that seems best to you. Usually

something between 20% and 70% will be best.

Why Use High Pass Sharpening...

Photoshop already comes with many sharpening filters built in... Why use the high-pass method?

Photoshop CS2 and on includes the new Smart Sharpen feature that achieves similar results to

the High Pass method, but I feel it lacks the control and visual queues that this method allows. 

Another great benefit to this method is that it creates a low-detail sharpening layer that you

can turn on and off or adjust the opacity and strength.