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Removing the background of a picture

yeahps:

There are MANY ways to remove the BG from a picture, On this tutorial I’ll be showing you 3 of them.

For this tutorial I’ll be using This picture. The first thing you have to do is add a coloring to the picture. I’ll be using This one now flatten your image (select the layer with the photo>right click>Flatten image)

PEN TOOL:

1) The first thing you have to do is duplicate your image (right click>duplicate layer) and make the one on the bottom invisible by clicking the eye icon beside it on the layer palette, Now we should have something like this:

Now Zoom in to 200% (CTRL ++).

2) Select the pen too you can do this by clicking the letter “P" on your keyboard. Automatically it supposed be set to path instead of shape layers.

3) Start tracing the edges of the picture. You must go from the bottom to the top. Aim the pen tool to the starting point and left-click on your mouse then click on the other path and so on. If you make a mistake don’t worry, All you have to do is go Edit>Step backward and continue.

4) On the hair you don’t have to trace the edge of the hair exactly like it is because that’s quite impossible so what you can do is trace it to your like but making sure it stays on the same shape and not to extent to the BG so it doesn’t look bad.

5) After you are done tracing, close the path by uniting the end point to the beginning point. Now, right click on your photo and select “Make Selection"

Now a Pop-Up window will open set the feather radius to “0" to make a clean cut, If you set it to something higher the edges will look kind of blurry as well make sure “anti-aliased" box is checked and also “new selection"

6) Select the Rectangular Marquee tool you can do this by clicking the letter “M" on your keyboard. Right-Click on your photo and choose “Select Inverse" and then hit the delete key. Zoom out and you should have something like this:

If on your picture still show some BG between the body all you have to do is grab the pen tool (P) trace that area, Make selection and hit the delete key.

MAGIC WAND TOOL:

This is maybe one of the easiest way but it doesn’t always work exactly how you expect it because sometimes the color of the BG mess with the picture and results impossible to delete it.

1) after you have you picture colored and flatten you duplicate that layer and make the one on the bottom invisible like we did at the beginning of the Pen tool tutorial.

2) Now Grab your magic wand tool you can do this by clicking the letter “W" and it looks like this:

3) all we have to do now is click on the BG and it should look like this:

Then hit delete and keep doing that until the BG is fully removed.

When something like this:

Happens you grab the eraser tool with a soft brush and delete it and as well you can make the edges look cleaner by reducing the size of the eraser toot, zoom in and gently pass it trough the edges.

And this is the final result:

QUICK SELECTION TOOL:

Now we are going to work with what we could call the sister of the Magic wand tool. The keyboard shortcut is as well “W" so but this tool should look like this:

1) Open your photo, Color it, Flatten then duplicate and make the layer on the bottom invisible.

3) On here:

It should look like on the image and clicking where the black circle is you have to choose a rough brush, Notice the black circle will not always be selected on there it should appear the brush that you have selected. You can make it bigger or smaller depends on what area you are going to select.

On the Drop down menu where the Black circle is it will let you choose the size, Hardness, Spacing, angle and roundness. Set it like is shown in the picture:

Once again the size is up to you and everything else I recommend them to set it like this for better results.

3) Now As the Magic wand tool all you have to do is click on the BG (Twice) and hit the delete key.

4) On here:

you can see the tool selected a bit of the picture but don’t worry that’s not a problem at all.

All you have to do is Select this option:

This should act like an eraser for the path that was created. After you are done removing the path. You hit the delete key and select again this option:

Or the one in the middle.

4) The continue to delete you BG and if the edges turn out kind of blurry select the eraser tool with a rough brush and gently pass it by the edges of the picture. and this is the final result:

Thank you for Reading and hope you find this Tutorial helpful(: