Help with Isolation

[SunflowerMindGoat]

Hi! I am currently learning Photoshop and want to know how I can isolate this photo.  I am using the Select and Mask tool. I particularly want to isolate the girl in the image from the background as you can see in image 1. I want the overall product for the project I am working on to have the shawl on the girl completely showing but when I went to Select, then Select and Mask it got rid of parts of her shawl and adds part of the background. You can see this in  the final in Image 2. How do fix this? 

Image 1:

Image 2

[Nancy OShea]

Divide & concur.  Make three layer copies with Ctrl+J and name each layer.

Girl

Shawl

Background

Use Navigator panel to zoom in/out. 

Use paint brush in Mask mode to hide/show respective areas -- black to conceal, white to reveal.

Detailed masking requires utmost patience and accuracy. Take your time. Don't rush it.

[D Fosse]

Detailed masking requires utmost patience and accuracy. Take your time. Don't rush it.

By Nancy OShea

Amen 😉

[LAMY2017]

This is one of the things I love about Photoshop -- many ways to flay the feline.

Rather than concur with Divide and Conquer, recent versions of Ps came with cool masking techniques.

This is the result from just a few clicks using Ps 2025>Filter>Camera Raw Filter>Mask, then selecting Person 1.

Just a little cleanup (circled in pink) and vyola. I didn't need to select Clothes.

[Nancy OShea]

Automagic tools sometimes work & sometimes don't.  It's good to have more than one recipe for cooking the goose.

[Conrad_C]

This might potentially be possible to complete in Select and Mask alone…if each tool is used appropriately. My demo below shows these steps, using the first three Select and Mask tools in the proper sequence:

1. Select the layer and choose the command Select > Select and Mask. 

2. Click Select Subject to get the overall person outline. Pieces are missing, we’ll fix that. 

3. Drag the Quick Selection tool to quickly add and subtract easy similar non-ambiguous areas such as the hat and arm.

4. Drag the Refine Edge Brush tool to mark ambiguous or semitransparent regions along the edge, which in this image are mostly about the shawl fringe, but in other images can include hair edges. Never drag the Refine Edge Brush tool over areas that should be fully inside or outside the mask, drag it only over difficult edges. 

5. Switching the View mode to Black and White shows how the Refine Edge tool created a semitransparent mask edge to handle those regions. 

6. Drag the Brush tool to manually clean up internal or external mask regions, or solid edges.

That will get you most of the way in just a minute or two, as shown. For more precise, professional results, of course you’ll want to spend a lot more time than I did to get a cleaner result. For example, I missed a tiny bit of the arm with the Quick Selection tool, and it looks like I should have painted the Refine Edge Brush tool over more of the upper part of the fringe.

For maximum speed and efficiency, be familiar with the traditional tool modes for adding (+ mode, the default) and subtracting (- mode, hold down the Alt key in Windows or the Option key in macOS) areas with a selection tool or brush. 

An important note: Select Subject and the Quick Selection tool have trouble including the arm in the subject, needing manual overrides to select, because large areas of the arm are totally blown out…they’re solid white with no detail. If you have the raw version of this file, bring down the highlights until the arm is no longer solid white and takes on more of a normal skin color. When image quality is higher, automatic selection goes a lot faster.