Class Project 03 - Cut a person out & put them into another image in Photoshop

So it's class project time. We're going to take the girl that we made before, with the Quick Selection Tool. Instead of copying and pasting it we're going to add that Layer Mask over here. Once you've got a Mask for her, I want you to go and find a background. I've found this grass, I don't want you to use the grass. You can use the grass, I'm not going to know but I'd love for you to go off and find a different background. Use something like Google Images to find a background where you can place her, or use Unsplash to find a background. Then I want you to put them in the image, and then we're going to use the Burn Tool to try and settle them in there with a bit of a shadow. 

Now again, I've used grass, you can use anything you like. The weirder the better, in my book. I've used super simple grass, not very exciting, Dan, come on. Now there's one tool in there that you haven't used yet, it's called the Burn Tool for the shadow. I'm going to keep going in this video and show you how I made this one so that you've got the tools to go off, and do your class project. When you finish, make sure you share it with me. I'd love to see what you did. Take it away, Dan. 

So I'm going to be using '07' and '08'. So let's do this together, and you can watch me, then use your own background image. You could even use your own model. Now one little tip here is, it works perfectly for this image, just using nothing else other than the Quick Selection Tool. What you can do is you can turn on ‘Auto Enhance’. What it does is it does make a better edge on it. It does take a lot longer though, so if you've got a-- watch this, I'm going to click and drag across a bunch of it, then let go. It took a fraction of a second there, but this is a super-duper Mac. If you've got a really old, whatever the opposite for super-duper is, if your laptop is that laptop, you might find it's just not even worth it because it takes so long to do selection, so I'm going to leave it off because it did a fine enough selection. 

Basic stuff, I'm going to go and fix it in a sec. This one, we have to be a little-- take a little bit more time doing. Why? Because it's going against a different background. Remember, when we put the Type behind it, it's pretty forgiving when you're copying something out and pasting it against its own background. That all looks good, so now, going to zoom in. 'Command +', 'Control +' on a PC. I'm just going to start hitting things like the laces. Do I want to turn Auto Enhance on? Let's do it. Grab the sole there. Every time I click though, painfully slow. So what I might do is, let's do the hard stuff together, we've done it before in the last tutorial. So what we'll do is, I'll get the editor just to speed up my painful slow selection process, and I'll see you once I've got my selection. 

Actually, quickly before you do though, if you're watching this video by itself, without the larger tutorial, the one thing you will need to know is to hold down the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac, and just click on the stuff you don't want selected You can say, I didn't want this. I'm just clicking, holding, and painting. Go away All right, super speedy time. 

I am back, that is a good enough selection. Now what I'm going to do is, remember, not copy and paste onto another one. I'm going to use my new super sweet Layer Mask technique. And all I do is click the button. You can see, all the black bits there. Hide the background, and the white bit shows through her body. Grab your 'Move Tool', click, hold, drag, drag, drag. I'm putting mine on to 'Quick Selection 08'. So you've found your background. The hardest thing about finding a background is getting the perspective right. So there's going to be some, lots of trial and error probably for you to find the right background. 

What I'm also going to do is I'm going to transform her down, she's a bit big. I'm going to zoom out. I'm using 'Command T', or 'Control T' on a PC. This is totally like--- I'm looking at it going. Where does she look believable on this grass? You might argue, "No way, Dan." It's a terrible example. I've literally got one eye closed, and I'm kind of like tongue out. Yes, about there. About there, hit 'Return'. So that is pretty fake, she just plonked in here. So what I'm going to do is show you a cool little trick to kind of start blending the background a bit more. 

So with the 'Background Layer' selected we're going to use something called the 'Burn Tool'. Now it's over here, it is this guy, Burn Tool. By default it's going to look like this little pedal here. Click and hold that down, and grab the 'Burn Tool'. The Burn Tool will make things darker, the Dodge Tool, just so you know, makes things lighter, but the Burn Tool is good for faking shadows. Let's grab the 'Burn Tool', changes the brush size. I have to make mine a lot bigger. Actually I'll leave that bit in there. I was like, "Why is it getting bigger?" It's a target on your screen, if I tap 'Caps lock' on my keyboard, turns it back into the circle, which I can make bigger and smaller. Some people just like having caps lock on as a target rather than seeing this big brush, but if you do get lost when you're new check caps lock, could be that. 

How big? I'm going to have mine about, you can see up here, about 500, now drop this down. We're going to have 500, and we're going to have the Hardness at '0'. It just means, can you see kind of the icon there, it's a fuzzy edge. If I go up to 100, you can see it's got a really crisp hard edge. I want kind of a shadow to have a nice soft edge. 'Background Layer' selected, 'Burn Tool' selected. And in my case, Mid Tone's going to work. Exposure, play around with it, that's how dark it makes it. This will depend on your image, if yours is quite a dark background you might have to work with shadows. If it's quite a light background, work with highlights, just experiment with, through those three. 

All I'm going to do is this, kind of just paint it. I'm clicking, holding, and dragging my mouse. Can you see, just building it up slowly. You might have to turn the Exposure down a little bit so it's not so aggressive. I'm going to have mine up so you can see what I'm doing. When you're working, you might work with the slightly out of touch. I'll make my brush a bit smaller. So there's going to be bits where it looks like she's touching the ground, and bits where it isn't. So I'm just trying to cast a shadow for her, basically. I'm happy with that enough. It's okay. 

What it should have done, is duplicated the background, so I've got kind of a wrecked version with all the shadows on, and a version that's not wrecked. By wrecked I mean adding the shadow to it. So before you get started make sure you duplicate this layer, and maybe call one called the Shadow Layer, so you can turn it on and off, and see how you did. I'm going to cheat with some editing magic. 

You're back, so super fantastic editing, I should have done this in the beginning but there's my original Layer, I've worked on the Shadow Layer, it's a duplicate of it, but watch, I can turn it on and off now. What you might find, if you go too hard core you can lower the opacity of the Shadow Layer as well. Watch when I lower it down. You can kind of tone it back too. It always happens, you always get too far. You don't know you've gone too far until you've gone too far. So, the Opacity Slider, with the original behind it, really this is kind of a nice way of undoing it, or moving backwards. 

One thing we might do as well-- I'll show you in this case, my one's okay, it's the Levels. We did this in an earlier tutorial. Remember, when we copied and pasted that shoe it just wasn't the quite-- the blacks and highlights aren't quite the same. It will be the same thing for this Layer 01. I'm even going to double click 'Layer 01', and be all special and call this one 'Model'. With it selected, I'm going to 'Adjustments', going to use 'Levels'. Remember this option here? This says I want the layers to only affect the layer just underneath, click on him. It means, when I play around with this, it only affects that Model Layer. I'm going to now just mess about. I don't want to probably play with it too much because mine's okay, but I know, in your example you might find a huge difference in what the colors from one background to that model is going to be. 

So now it is time to go off, find your own background. Maybe get the perspective right. Copy and paste the girl in with Layer Mask, I want to see a Layer Mask. You can share it with one of two things. You can just save a JPEG, and upload it, and share it, or what you can do is, you can send a screenshot. I'm going to zoom in a little bit. Now if I take a screenshot, you could show me your Levels and your Layer Mask, so I know you're not cheating. On a Mac, it's 'Command-Shift-4'. 'Command-Shift-4' gives you this little target here, you can just drag a box, ready, ready. That will give you an image that's on your desktop, that you can share. If you're on a PC, you hit 'Print Screen', then you do something with it, I think. You might have to look into what Windows do in terms of screenshots. It's been a little while since I've been on a Windows machine. Otherwise just do a 'File', 'Save As JPEG', and I'll take your word for it. 

Now get creative about where-- I put it on the grass-- that feels like, "That's pretty basic, Dan, nothing very exciting." It doesn't have to be super realistic, it's technique, we're learning. You can go crazy, or you can go super simple like me on some grass. All right, class project over, let's get into the next video.