Inspiring

Answered

Select and Mask bleed through

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
May 13, 2018
2 replies
1668 views

Hello,

I followed Scott Kelby's tutorial, but he's got hair on a light background. I'm applying this to museum objects in cases, masking whatever's behind them; I try to maximize contrast first in Lightroom before bring the image into Photoshop. Still, I'm finding that instead of simply finding the borders and excluding everything on one side of the ants, the tool is deleting pixels in the color range on both sides. I'm winding up with semi-transparent ghost areas:

I have to keep going back with the brush tool to make these areas "solid" again. How can you select tolerance or sample area size in Select and Mask mode to minimize this?

Thanks much,

Chris Niestepski

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer davescm

Hi

Refine edge is the wrong tool. It is for soft edges such as fur and hair.

This took about a minute with the pen tool to draw a path around the object then click where shown to add a vector mask from the path. No more brushing or refining required.

Dave

N

nicolasd97846975

Participant

Hello

I´m having the same problem, with hair. I make a selection an when trying to recover the hair, instead of getting it, PS deletes the existing ones.

Some hair appears, but at this point im using the brush yo recover what the tool took. I sa tutorial on youtube, but my results ar very far from theirs.

Thanks for any help!!

davescm

Community Expert

Hi

For solid edges like that S&M is probably the wrong tool and the refine edge tool within select and mask is definitely the wrong tool. Refine edge is designed for soft edges such as hair , fur etc.

It is hard to tell without seeing the starting image but the most effective tool for a solid object is likely to be the pen tool which will produce a nice crisp mask. If you want to put up an example image we may be able to suggest the best method.

Draw with Pen tools in Photoshop

Dave

C

cdnatadobeAuthor

Inspiring

OK, so here's the original axe:

I used the polygon marque to outline--

--then went into S&M mode--

--and here's after some refining, with the brush set on full hardness, spacing 25%.

I can understand not getting everything at the top, since that's where the shine is. I'm more troubled by the areas along wooden shaft, where at first it looks like I've got a solid edge, but you can see pixels have been erased even well inside of where the marque was. If I put a contrasting background behind the ax afterward, it will show through. I'm wondering if the noise is a factor (ISO 3200).

davescm

Correct answer

Community Expert

Hi

Refine edge is the wrong tool. It is for soft edges such as fur and hair.

This took about a minute with the pen tool to draw a path around the object then click where shown to add a vector mask from the path. No more brushing or refining required.

Dave

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