Refine Edge Tool

Quick reference

• 00:04 Today we're gonna be looking at a feature that can take your selections to
• 00:08 the next level, and that is refine edge.
• 00:10 If you've ever done work with subjects that contain hair or
• 00:13 fur, you know what kind of a chore it can be to extract them from your background.
• 00:18 Refine edge allows you to single out individual strands of hair or
• 00:22 fur, resulting in a much better extraction.
• 00:25 Let me show you how this works.
• 00:27 So, here I am in Adobe Photoshop where we're gonna take a look at
• 00:30 two examples on how refine edge can help you tremendously in your projects.
• 00:35 In this first photo here, which I grabbed from Shutterstock.com,
• 00:38 you can clearly see that this lady has a lot of hair going on in this photo.
• 00:42 There's hair everywhere.
• 00:44 And using the traditional selection methods in Photoshop,
• 00:47 you're gonna get a pretty ugly extraction.
• 00:50 So, the first thing that we need to do is make our initial selection.
• 00:53 Now, in this case, because the background is pretty much a solid color,
• 00:56 I'm actually gonna start by selecting the background itself.
• 01:00 And, of course, just like most things in Photoshop,
• 01:02 there are many ways of doing this.
• 01:04 But for this example, I'm gonna be using color range,
• 01:07 which can be found under the select menu.
• 01:09 Now, the way color range works, and I've covered this in the past, it allows you to
• 01:13 select individual colors in your photo and turn them into a selection.
• 01:17 You're gonna notice, as I select the blue at the right top corner,
• 01:20 a little bit has become a selection in our preview.
• 01:23 Now, if I hold down my shift key, I can add to that selection just like this.
• 01:27 I can actually drag my mouse over top of all the blues, and
• 01:30 those will be added to my selection.
• 01:32 And then if I move my window over to the right a little bit,
• 01:35 I can grab the blues in this area that were not selected.
• 01:38 Basically, what I'm looking for is white and black.
• 01:40 White will become my selection, and black will be left alone.
• 01:44 So, I'm gonna finish off by grabbing a little bit of the blue at the bottom
• 01:47 right-hand corner, and I'm now left with a pretty nice black and white result.
• 01:51 But, of course, for this example, as we want the model selected and
• 01:54 not the background, I'm gonna check invert right over here at the bottom right, and
• 01:58 then press okay, which is going to give me my selection of just the model.
• 02:03 Now, like I mentioned previously, using a traditional selection method like
• 02:07 this will give you pretty ugly extractions.
• 02:09 If I simply go and apply a layer mask,
• 02:12 you're going to notice that the edges of the model's hair look terrible.
• 02:16 So, let me undo, command or control+z.
• 02:18 And this time,
• 02:19 instead of applying a layer mask, we're simply deleting the background.
• 02:22 We want to use the refine edge feature, which can be found under the select menu,
• 02:27 as well.
• 02:28 Now, before we get into the good stuff,
• 02:30 there are a few ways you can view how your preview looks.
• 02:33 You can choose from marching ants, overlay, on-black, on-white, black and
• 02:38 white, on-layers, or reveal layer.
• 02:41 And you can also cycle through your views by pressing the f key or
• 02:44 disable them temporarily by pressing x.
• 02:47 Now, if you go to on-black, you can really see how traditional selection methods
• 02:51 are terrible at selecting hair or fur.
• 02:54 But luckily, refine edge is here to save the day.
• 02:57 Now, right down below, under your view options, you have edge detection, and
• 03:01 this is where the magic happens.
• 03:03 You're gonna wanna start by turning on smart radius,
• 03:05 which at first isn't going to do anything.
• 03:08 But as you start increasing the radius, Photoshop is
• 03:11 gonna start refining the area around your subject that contains hair or fur.
• 03:16 And depending on the size of the photo or how much hair or fur the model contains,
• 03:20 you may wanna increase the radius even more to get more refinement.
• 03:25 Now at this point, if I press the p key on my keyboard to see the original,
• 03:28 the refinement has certainly helped, but
• 03:30 there's still a lot of blue in the background that we need to deal with.
• 03:33 Once you get to this point,
• 03:34 there are a few things you can do to resolve this issue.
• 03:36 The first thing is the refine radius tool,
• 03:39 which can be found to the left-hand side of your refine edge window.
• 03:42 And this helps by expanding the detection area outside of your subject.
• 03:47 And it works just like a brush, so you can use your right and
• 03:50 left square bracket keys on your keyboard to make the brush bigger or smaller.
• 03:55 And then in most cases, all you have to do is simply brush right
• 03:58 around the outline of your model, just like I'm doing right here.
• 04:02 So, I'm gonna go right along the outline of the model, all the way around.
• 04:05 And this will tell Photoshop to really expand the area outside of the subject,
• 04:11 just like this.
• 04:12 And when I let go, you're gonna notice we now have a much more refined selection.
• 04:17 And that definitely helped a lot, but
• 04:19 we still have a little bit of blue around the subject.
• 04:21 So, the next feature you can use is decontaminate colors at
• 04:25 the bottom of the refine edge window.
• 04:27 And what this will do, this will tell Photoshop to look for
• 04:30 those colors that might be spilling in from the background onto the subject.
• 04:35 And in this case, the main color was blue.
• 04:37 So, when you turn decontaminate colors on,
• 04:39 it's gonna work to get rid of those colors that were spilling over.
• 04:42 And you can increase the amount if there's still a little bit of color left over.
• 04:46 Now, once again, taking a look at the original by pressing p on the keyboard,
• 04:50 and taking a look at what we have now, there's a huge improvement.
• 04:54 And even though we have a little ghosting left over, there's a good chance that
• 04:57 once you add an image behind your subject, you won't see that at all.
• 05:01 But if you do wanna refine it even more, we have the option to adjust the edge.
• 05:06 You can choose to smooth out any jagged edges that might be visible.
• 05:09 You can chose to feather the selection, which will soften it out a little bit.
• 05:12 You can increase the contrast, which will usually sharpen up the edges a little bit.
• 05:16 And you can shift the edge in or out, which sometimes helps a lot.
• 05:21 So, in this case, if you take a look right beside the book on the right side,
• 05:24 there's a little bit of blue left over.
• 05:26 And of course, we have a little bit of blue left over to the right of the hair.
• 05:30 This is a case where I'd want to shift the edge to the left,
• 05:33 which will pull it inwards a little bit.
• 05:35 And you'll notice when we start to shift the edge,
• 05:37 we now have an even better result.
• 05:39 The blue on the right side of the book is gone, and a lot of the ghosting that was
• 05:43 apparent on the right side of the hair is now gone, as well.
• 05:47 And like I mentioned, the area to the right of the hair,
• 05:49 that little bit of ghosting, there's a good chance that won't be seen when you
• 05:53 add another image in the background.
• 05:55 So, now that our refinement is just about complete,
• 05:57 we need to choose how we want to output it.
• 06:00 If you did not choose decontaminate colors,
• 06:02 you can choose to output it as a selection or just a layer mask.
• 06:06 But because that was checked on, we can choose to output it as a new layer, a new
• 06:10 layer with a layer mask, a new document or a new document with a layer mask.
• 06:14 For me, I always choose to output it as a new layer with a layer mask.
• 06:18 That will allow you to make further refinements later on if you need to.
• 06:21 And when you press okay, you're gonna be left with an extraction that
• 06:25 contains a layer mask as well as you can see in the layers panel.
• 06:28 Now, just to show you how well this extracted,
• 06:30 I'm gonna grab the other photo right here.
• 06:32 I'm gonna drag it onto this document, and
• 06:34 I'm gonna simply enlarge it just like this, and place it right behind the model.
• 06:39 And you can now really see that the individual strands of hair
• 06:42 look fantastic in our extraction.
• 06:45 Ending up with a result like this using a traditional selection method
• 06:48 without refine edge is nearly impossible.
• 06:51 Now, the nice thing about refine edge is that you can use it on pretty much
• 06:54 any selection.
• 06:55 It doesn't only have to be on a solid colored background.
• 06:59 So, in this photo here, which doesn't have a solid colored background, I can do
• 07:02 the same thing and use refine edge to grab a nice selection of this dog and its fur.
• 07:08 So, for this example, I'm gonna grab my quick selection tool,
• 07:11 which can be found on the tools bar in the left.
• 07:13 And once that's been selected,
• 07:14 I'm gonna simply brush over top of this dog to turn it into a selection.
• 07:18 Now, you're gonna notice that some areas outside of the dog have also been
• 07:21 selected, as well.
• 07:22 And in that case I can simply hold down my alt or
• 07:25 option key, option on the Mac, alt on Windows, to subtract from the selection.
• 07:30 And over here, I can just grab this area over here, and I'm not looking for
• 07:33 a perfect selection, but I do wanna select as much of the hair as possible.
• 07:37 So, I'm gonna decrease the brush size a little bit,
• 07:39 brush over top of this hair here, the hair over here, and
• 07:43 you'll notice that Photoshop just selected all of this area, as well.
• 07:46 Hold alt or option, and subtract just like that.
• 07:49 And finally, I'm gonna subtract from this section right over here, and
• 07:52 add this little strand of hair on the right.
• 07:55 So, now that we have our very basic selection, like I mentioned before,
• 07:59 if we were to simply add a layer mask, you get a very ugly cutout type of extraction.
• 08:04 So, let me undo that, command or control+z, and
• 08:06 once again, we're gonna hop into refine edge.
• 08:09 Now, because I have a selection method active, I can simply hit
• 08:11 refine edge on the options bar or again, I can find it under the select menu.
• 08:16 And just like we did before, I'm gonna turn on smart radius and then increase
• 08:20 the radius value until my selection starts looking really nice, right about there.
• 08:24 We can start to see the individual strands of hair.
• 08:27 And if I switch over to the black and
• 08:29 white view, you can really see how much Photoshop has refined this selection.
• 08:34 I'm gonna hop back over to the on-black view, and then with my refine radius tool,
• 08:38 I'm gonna start to brush around the outline of this dog
• 08:41 to expand the selection, which will give me a much nicer result.
• 08:46 So, I'm gonna brush up the left side of the dog, just like this around the fur.
• 08:50 And once I let go of my mouse, you're gonna notice we have a near
• 08:54 perfect selection of this dog, which contains fur, which like I mentioned,
• 08:58 with a traditional selection method, would be nearly impossible.
• 09:01 In this case, I'm not gonna need to turn on decontaminate colors.
• 09:04 So, I'm gonna output it as a new layer with a layer mask, press okay,
• 09:07 and there is my final result.
• 09:10 So, if I go back here, if I grab this photo once again,
• 09:13 drag this over here to this document, I'm gonna enlarge it,
• 09:17 place it behind the dog, and there is the final result.
• 09:21 And once again,
• 09:22 you have a layer mask available to you in case you need any further refinements.
• 09:27 As a quick example, you may notice at the bottom right-hand corner,
• 09:30 where the color is, there's a little bit of transparency.
• 09:33 So, I can press b on my keyboard to grab a brush,
• 09:36 make sure that the color is set to white, and then simply brush over top of
• 09:39 this area to bring back the original pixels, just like that.
• 09:44 And we're now left with two fantastic extractions of a dog that contained fur,
• 09:49 and a women that contained crazy hair.
• 09:52 And that is refine edge in Photoshop,
• 09:54 a tool that is not only gonna save you a ton of time and hassle, but
• 09:57 more importantly, you're gonna be left with fantastic looking extractions.

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