moving a selection behind foreground material

Question

I want to move a selection but have part of it hidden behind foreground material as shown in the screen shot below. I want to flip the background car wheel selection horizontally and add it to the right of the selection so that it appears to continue on in the background; it would overwrite the background portion of the mailbox (gray pixels) and end at the foreground edge of the mailbox (dark green pixels). I will get rid of the rest of the gray pixels also. I assume there is a fairly easy way to do this using a mask but can't figure out the workflow. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

davescm · Accepted Answer

Okay. I was thinking it would be preferable to select the mailbox since that has a defined edge, and the Quick Selection tool could easily detect it, and somehow create a mask and move the tire layer behind that. But if that's not possible, I guess I can zoom in at 100% or more to clean up the edge of where the tire is meeting up with the mailbox.

Hi

If you select the mailbox - then add the mask to the tyre copy above it with Layer >Layer Mask >Hide selection

Dave

Trevor.Dennis · Answer

I am not entirely clear on what you are trying to achieve, but I'll give you a couple of tips using this mock up

Whenever I want to place an object behind another object, I more or less always move the new foreground object to a layer at the top of the stack, like this. The reason is that this avoids possible issues with edges andanti aliasing.

Then select and copy the tire segment keeping it below the mailbox layer.

At this stage I have flipped the tire copy layer, but not moved it. I am showing to show you the problem with the edge.

Finally the flipped tire copy is moved into position, and any edge issues are hidden _behind_ the copied mailbox layer.

So it comes down to always using layers when you can. It allows maximum flexibility, and avoids edge artefacts.

BTW When you copy the tire selection, make that layer a Smart Object in case you decide to fine tune the Free Transform. This will ensure that you don't lose quality, even if you take a dozen attempts to get the transform exactly how you like it.

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