Step Seven: In the Layers panel, c lick to activate the
image layer. If there’s good contrast between the subject
and background, choose Select>Subject. Photoshop puts
marching ants around the subject.Step Eight: If the selection
needs fine-tuning, choose
Select>Select and Mask. In
the workspace that opens,
c lick the View menu in the
Properties panel (circled)
and pick a view that lets
you see edges that aren’t
included in your selection.
You can cycle through
the views by tapping F on
your keyboard. In this case,
Marching Ants works well.
Click outside the View
menu to close it.Step Nine: This selection is pretty good; though, to
include more hair in the selection, press R to grab the
Refine Edge Brush tool (circled) and then brush over any
hair strands that aren’t yet selected (the brush cursor is also
circled in red). Zoom in if you need to by pressing Com-
mand -+ (PC: Ctrl-+), and reposition the image onscreen
by Spacebar-dragging. Again, use the Left and Right
Bracket keys on your keyboard ( [ , ] ) to adjust brush size (a
size of 60 pixels was used here; try 20 pixels on the Adobe
Stock preview image).Step 10: When the selection looks good, scroll down the
Properties panel and expand the Output Settings section.
Turn off Decontaminate Colors, which tries to remove
any remaining background pixels that may be loitering
in the selection—not a problem here because our new
background is the same color as the original—and from
the Output To menu, choose Layer Mask (circled). Click
OK to close the Select and Mask workspace. Back in your
document, Photoshop hides the original background
with a layer mask (also circled).› › HOW TO> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ OCTOBER 2020[ 76 ]