Expert: LizaL - 3/4/2005

Question
Hi LizaL -

I am very anxious to be able to replace burnt out skies in photos: unfortunately I have yet to find a tutorial that doesn't lose me somewhere along the way!

The closest I have come is when using the following notes - I don't know their origin unfortunately.

I can get as far as (6)but when I drag the sky in the Layer Palette it just obscures the original picture and I can't get (7) to work at all.

If you can help me I will be VERY grateful!

Regards -

Denis




TO DELETE A BACKGROUND IN PHOT0SHOP AND REPLACE IT WITH ANOTHER IMAGE

1.Select pixels by Colour Range - Select/Colour Range.

2.Left mouse / click on the colour to be deselected and deleted.
Fuzziness Slider increases or decreases Range Selected

3.Select/ Inverse, right click on the selected
 area - Layer Via Cut.

4.Now - Select/Feather/5 Pixels - Ok - to make   
the edge of the Selected Area softer.

5.Toggle the "Eyes" on the layers in the Layer
 Palette, until you get a chequered background
 in place of the removed Areas - this indicates
 it is transparent.

6.Now open a sky you want to add . You will see
 the sky has opened in a New Layer - left click
 on the sky in the Layer Palette and drag it
 over to your original picture in Photoshop from
 the palette itself.

7.The sky will now be on top of the original -    
 click on the original picture, and then look at
 the Layer Palette - the sky is above the        
 original - drag the original Layer on top of  
 the Sky Layer, and the sky will now be in place
 of the removed portion.  

Answer
Hi Denis,

I see what you mean -- those instructions, while probably pretty accurate, are hard to follow and understand. What they probably mean, as a sum total of all the steps, is that you'll be erasing parts (presumably the bad parts) of the original sky, which will leave holes in the original file. Then you'd drag your *new* sky image into the original file, but place it on a layer *below* the original sky later in the original file -- the one you erased from in an earlier step.

Or at least I think this is what they mean :-)

But selecting using Color Range isn't always a solution, especially if you have a situation where your original image is monochrome, or has a lot of similar colors.


Anyway, there are several other ways to go about what you want to accomplish, and I hope I can be clearer.


1. The Extract filter:

With your image open, go to the Filter pulldown menu and select Extract... You'll see your image within a new preview window, and you'll see a toolbox on the left side of the screen. Select the top tool, which looks like a marker.

Draw all around the edges of the part of the landscape you want to keep. You can change your brush size, too, if you have to get into some tight spots -- you can also zoom in and out with the magnifying glass (or keyboard commands).

Make sure you close the area you're drawing so there's not a gap. Then choose the next tool down in the palette, which is a bucket -- or fill -- tool. Click within the border you just drew, and you'll see it fill (the default color is blue). Hit the OK button, and what you drew the border around will appear in a regular Photoshop window.

You'll still have some cleanup to do, but this will get you started.

Here's a little Extract movie, using a picture someone sent me where they wanted to delete a huge blue background. In this example, I've only isolated one flag from the background, but hopefully this will give you an idea of how to use this filter. (It's kind of a big movie and might take a minute to load.)

http://little-works.com/all_experts/extract.mov


2. Quick Mask: Watch this little movie first -- I'm not being very exact in it, but I just wanted to show you how to use the tools.
http://little-works.com/all_experts/quick_mask3.mov


It's a lot like the Extract... filter, but more precise. Plus, you can also make several selections in the original image -- your selection doesn't have to be one continuous section.

Here are instructions to accompany the movie:

Right below your big color swatches in the Photoshop tool box are two buttons. Enter quick mask mode by clicking on the right-most button of the two. Double click on this button, and make sure Selected areas is ticked.

Then choose a brush and paint -- in this example, I was painting the background, and not the kitten. In other words, I was painting everything I wanted to select and delete, and those are the areas that appear in red. (While in Quick Mask mode, you can also choose brush sizes and types according to the areas you're painting in; for some of the more intricate areas you may want to do this.)

When you first enter Quick Mask mode and tick that Selected Areas button, you're setting up the function so that it selects everything you want to delete.

So brush around on everything you want to delete, then you're finished, click on the exit quick mask mode button, which is right beside the one you clicked on to *enter* quick mask.

You should see what you painted show up as a selection. All you have to do now is delete that unwanted selection by selecting Cut from the Edit pulldown menu.

You'll probably have to go in and do some extra touch-up work to get the stubborn areas out of the picture.

But after that, select your Move tool from the tool box (it's the top-right tool in the tool box), and then drag your sky picture over into your original picture (in my case, the kitten pic). Put the sky layer under the image in the original file, and position as needed.

So in essence, what I did was cut a hole out of the kitten picture, and dragged in a new background.




3. Magnetic Lasso:

Another way to make selections from intricate images is the Magnetic Lasso tool. You'll still have some cleanup to do afterwards, and you might even have to draw in and/or use the Pen tool to recreate some of the paths that might be inadvertently misshapen, or deleted in the process, but it does help you make the initial selections.

This is yet another way of selecting parts of an image that you don't want -- like bad parts of a sky or a background.

This tool will "snap" towards the edges of your image as you guide your pointer around it. You can click once to "set" an initial pixel, then simply move your mouse around the edge of the area, or you can click all the way around to set individual points. Clicking all the way around will let you get into the tighter, more intricate places.

In this little movie, I double-clicked on the bike image to unlock it and make it an editable layer, then I created a second, transparent layer and put it underneath the bike image. This ensured that the subject of the photo would be on a transparent background when I finished.

Then I used the Magnetic Lasso to select a couple areas of the picture, just as an example. I also made more than one active selection at a time. To do this, I selected the background from one area, then held down the Shift key while I selected another. Of course, if you want, you could select an area, delete it, and then move on to the next area; either way will work.

http://little-works.com/all_experts/mag_lasso.mov


So I hope this helps! The instructions you had weren't too far off the mark, but I agree, kind of easy to misunderstand.

Plus, whenever you get into the business of selecting similar pixels and pixels within similar color ranges, you run the risk of deleting things you don't want. If I were to use Color Range on the kitten picture, I'd wind up selecting a lot of stuff I didn't want to select, simply because the kitten, his bed, and the background are of such similar colors.


Let me know if I need to clarify anything! And post back if you need more help.

Lisa