How to change the background in Photoshop CS3

1. Ctrl+J to get layer 1

2. Create a new layer between background and layer 1 and color it to what you like

3. Click layer 1 and then click image> adjustment> Desaturate

4. image >adjustment > levels and use the eyedropper tool to pick the color above the cat (remember to click the first eyedropper among those 3 in the popup window before clicking the black background). Adjusting levels can change higher saturation and more contrast as you can see the result.

5. Set the layer mode as screen then create a new layer on top of this layer. Use history brush tool to get the outline of the cat

Finally

Personally, I got interested in Photoshop when I realized that it could pluck a person out of a photo and then paste him/her onto a totally new background. To this day there are many requests from friends and family who want to do something similar with their photos. So I will be showing you a few techniques to get it done using Photoshop. Photoshop has the excellent Extract filter built especially for such tasks. Photoshop CS4 however, no longer features the Extract filter. So we will first look at how to use the extract tool to pull off the maneuver, then briefly see how you can enable the extract filter in CS4 or use an alternative to the Extract filter. Lets get working straight away, shall we?

Change the Background of a Photo with The Extract Filter

If you have pre-CS4 version of Photoshop, you can find the Extract filter under the Filter menu. The Extract filter is very useful to cut out or extract a person/object from the photo and then use it on another photo to change the background of the original photo. The tool is very simple to use. Although it opens a giant dialog box there is really no need to be intimidated by it. First off, go ahead and check the Smart highlighter box right away. Now choose the highlighter tool and draw around the object you want to extract. Make sure you cover the edges, this means that the highlight stroke should roughly lie half on the object you want to extract and half on the background. You dont have to be precise or want a Wacom tablet. Photoshop will help you along. Somewhat like this: Ads by Google

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You can change the brush size of the highlighter for greater precision in corners and smaller areas. Then choose the fill tool from the extract filter toolbar and click once inside the area you want to keep. Hit the preview button and you will be shown what the final image will look like once extract finishes its work. Click OK if the results seem close to what you are looking for, or else you can start over once again. Expert Tip: Duplicate the layer before starting the extract filter. That way, you still have the original image when extract finishes. Now Ctrl + Click on the extracted layers thumbnail to load it as a selection. You can now use Select > Refine Edges to improve the selection and hence the extract. Once done hit Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + V to get the extracted-refined object on its own layer.

The Extract Filter in CS4

As I mentioned earlier, the extract filter is no longer present in Photoshop CS4, the latest offering from Adobe. You can simply copy and paste the ExtractPlus.8BF file from your CS3 installations Plugins/Filters/ folder to the corresponding folder in CS4 install directory. Oh, you can also download it from Adobes site if you dont have a CS3 installation handy. My Bad!

When you fire up Photoshop the next time, you will see the extract command under the Filter menu. You can now use it as detailed above.

Alternatives to Extract Filter

There are always more than one way to achieve similar results in Photoshop. So if you would like to ditch the extract filter altogether you can use the improved quick selection tool. It does a pretty good job of detecting edges. In case it goes wrong, you can always add to (Shift) and subtract from (Alt) the selection. As an added advantage, it gives you a selection you can easily refine, so you wouldnt have to work extra to get the selection as we did in the expert tip above.

You can also use the freeware InstantMask to mask out a person or object from any photo. It uses a slightly different approach that reminds one of the commercial plug-in Mask Pro from OnOne software but the results vary hugely.

Here is the finished result using the extract tool. Just added a background and some text! Keep in mind that there is an algorithm doing the processing behind what seems like magic. The application has no idea who or what the object is in the photograph. You get best results when there is good contrast between the object and the background. That is one of the reason people shoot against a green or blue screen because then you can get excellent contrast in the green/blue channel and creating a mask to extract an object is super easy. Have you attempted the task of changing the background of a photo before? How did you do it? In this tutorial, we are going to combine these two photos:

And create this photo:

Introduction: This tutorial is to help you learn how to change the background of a photo to something more interesting if you choose. There are many ways of getting this done, but this technique is probably one of the easiest and most effective. Ok, so once you open two similar photos (preferably the same size) that you would like to combine in photoshop:

1. Adjust the Levels and Brightness and Contrast of both pictures

so they are just about as similarly adjusted as possible. If you need more explanation of this visit our Photo Touchups Tutorial.

2. Then working with the photo that has the background that you
want to use, Select the whole thing (Select>All), Copy the whole thing (Edit>Copy), and then working with the photo that has the foreground that you want to use, Paste the previous photo onto a new layer (Edit>Paste). Your layers menu for the for your photo should now look similar to the picture to the left. With the background photo on top of the foreground photo.

3. Now, add a Layer Mask to the upper layer that Hides All,
(Layer>Add Layer Mask>Hide All). Your Layers menu should now look like similar to the picture below.

4. Click on the Brush Tool,

5. (make sure the colors you are working with are black and white).

6. Then (with the mask on the upper layer selected) simply brush
where you want the new background to show through. You will

probably have to change brush sizes often for the more intricate places.

Change Background color in Photoshop

Introduction When it comes to teaching you how to change the color of an object in Photoshop (my apologies to Elements users, this one is just for Photoshop), most tutorials make it look deceptively simple. A few clicks and it's done. Here is why it's deceptive:

They often use stock

photos, such as the one above. The perfect definition between the red car and the white background means that making a selection is a piece of cake. Or let's say I wanted to change the background in this photo of a guy wearing a polo shirt:

The studio quality of the photo makes it extremely easy to select the black and change it to whatever color I want (although I must admit that in this case the hair might pose a problem). So let's get real. In your own non-pro, non-studio, real-world photos, you will have to deal with textures and color variations that make selecting and changing a color a lot more problematic than some would have you believe. My goal in this tutorial is to give you a way to change a background color in a real-life setting. The tutorial

In the photo above, the wall has a stucco texture that gives it variation in color. The suit provides a fairly good contrast, but nowhere near what you get in a stock photo. Shadows from the guy and the chair create darker areas on the wall which will create a halo of the old color if not meticulously selected. If you read my last tutorial, you know that I want you to get results without the meticulous work routinely performed by pro retouchers. So here are the steps: 1. Open your image and copy the your background layer and work on that layer for good measure (Mac: CommandJ; PC: CtrlJ). From the top menu, choose Select-->Color Range and you will get the following dialog box:

With the "Selection" option active (in the box below the photo), click in the photo (either the big one or the one in the dialog boxboth work) on the color you want to change. Here is what one click got me:

Everything you see in

white is selected. Clearly, I am not done. 2. Because the wall has variations in color, I need to add to my selection. In the dialog box, check the eyedropper tool with the + sign after it. This means that you can now click as many times as you like and add to the current selection. I clicked once on a darker part of the wall and got the following result:

done.

Not bad, but still not

3. At this point, you have two choices: continue to click until you have a good selection or play around with the "fuzziness" slider. Here is what happened when I increased the fuzziness slider to "60":

Better, but I still haven't selected all of the wall. Your best bet is to continue to add to your selection both by clicking AND by changing the fuzziness slider. AN IMPORTANT NOTE: You will notice that my selection has already picked up the shoes, the pocket square, and the reflections in the windows. And as I continue to select more color variation in the wall, this problem will only get worse. But have no fear. Over-selecting is far better than under-selecting. We will deal with the problem areas later. 4. Once you have a good selection, click OK. You will now see the "dancing ants" (as they are sometimes called) all around your selected area. At this point, the selection still needs some fine tuning. In the toolbar at the left, click on one of the selection tools such as the lasso tool (L) or the quick selection tool (W). You aren't going to use those tools, but you are going to steal a feature that they activate. With one of those tools selected, look for the "Refine Edge" button in the menu bar at the top:

box that will help you better define your selection:

Click on it to get a dialog

Here, you can see exactly what you have selected and you can adjust the radius of the edge, the contrast, the smoothness, etc. The nice thing about having a preview mode is that you can see the effects that the sliders produce. But why complicate things? I recommend sticking mainly to the "Contract/Expand" slider. What I want to do here is make sure that no shadow (say, around his hair) is left unselected. I expanded my selection a lot (71%), clicked OK, and was left with an even better selection of the wall and an even worse side-effect of unwanted selected elements (look at the shirt and tie, for example). What to do? 5. With those dancing ants still doing their thing, hit CommandJ (Mac) or Ctrl J (PC) to put your selection on a new layer. If you turn off visibility in the other

layer(s), you will see exactly what you saw in the "Refine Edge" dialog box: the selected part of the image. As you do the next steps, you can toggle the visibility of the other layer(s) as needed. 6. Time to change the color. This is where it gets fun. With your top layer selected, go to Image-->Adjustments-->Hue/Saturation to get the following dialog box:

As you can see, I left the bottom layers visible so I could see what the wall color would look like against the windows. In the dialog box, make sure that "Colorize" is checked in the lower right-hand corner. You are now free to experiment with hue (i.e. the color), saturation (the intensity), and lightness/darkness (I'll stop insulting your intelligence on this one). This stage is simple and fun, but you will notice that I still haven't dealt with those shoes, shirt, and other areas I don't want to change. We'll take care of that next. First, settle on a color and click OK. 7. With your top layer selected, go to the layers palette and add a layer mask:

colorized layer visible:

Now you will want to make only the

8. With the mask selected, choose a brush (sized according to the areas of color you want to eliminate) and simply paint out the parts of the image where the color change is unwelcome:

In the image above, I am painting (with black set as the foreground color in the left menu bar) over the shirt and tie. I will then paint out the shoes and the windows, and I am left with a new wall color that retains the texture and variations of the natural wall. Here is the BEFORE:

And the AFTER:

Conclusion Whether the actual color change is better or worse is up to you, but I hope I have given you some practical techniques that work for real-life photos. A few final words of advice:

If your saturation and lightness/darkness settings are too extreme, you will begin to lose the natural texture and variation that make a background realistic. My photo had a decent amount of contrast between the background and the person. Imagine if he had blond hair and was wearing a beige suit. Similar colors would require more precise selections and masking. Unless you are a person of infinite patience (and if so, consider a job as a retoucher), you might want to avoid such situations. Experiment. Deviate. The beautiful thing about Photoshop is that there are a dozen ways to do almost anything. The important thing is to get a result that you like.

PHOTOSHOP CS3 TUTORIAL: THE ERASE BACKGROUND TOOL. REMOVING COMPLEX BACKGROUNDS.

The erase background tool is powerful, but good results are only possible if you understand how it works. In this tute, we will look at all the options in the tool and use them to extract backgrounds from our images. The tool works best if the background is all a similar colour, for example, someone against a solid colour or a bright sky. 1I have deliberately chosen a difficult image, as the girl has flyaway hair that i want to keep.

2From the toolbox, select the background eraser tool

3When the tool is selected, the control palette will display the default settings. Select the 3rd button, Sampling:Foreground Swatch This will only erase the foreground colour. Set the tolerance to 25%

Make sure Protect Foreground Colour is ticked.Selecting the option Sampling:Foreground Swatch allows you to sample the background colour most prominent in your image, so the eraser will ignore contrasting colour pixels. Choosing to Protect Foreground Colour allows you to sample a foreground colour to protect from the eraser.

4Now we need to sample the background colour to erase. Select the background swatch in your toolbox, and double click to bring up the colour panel.

5Select the background colour with the eyedropper, right click to select a 51X51 average. This will make sure that the area sampled will be larger than just one pixel, so many shades of light blue will be included instead of just a singular blue pixel. Next, select the foreground to protect (we will start with the girls hair) I will use a 11X11 average for this. Notice the colours on my background and foreground swatches.

6Choose a nice big size for the brush. Use CTRL (CMD) and the bracket keys({}) to change the brush size.

7Think of the brush as a sort of magic wand tool, that erases selections based on the colour it clicks on. The more a colour is prersent under the radius of the brush, the more photoshop will think it is the background colour, and erase it.

8You can now get nearer the edge, just remember that you want more of the colour to be erased, less of the protected colours, under the brush!

9Notice that to select the more fiddly edges, I am positioning the centre of the brush on top of the light blue, not the hair.

10These settings will remain true for similar areas, as soon as we get to areas with different colurs, for example the girls blouse, we need to select different colours to protect use the eyedropper to select the new foreground colour, right click to select a 51X51 pixel average.

11 You will need to change foreground and background colours often as you work through the image.

12Now open another image, perhaps an outdoor image like a beach or busy street. Paste the selection of the girl above it, resize to fit and get rid of any stray white areas with a soft brush eraser.

13To tidy up any stray white edges around the hair, we will darken some parts of the imageSelect the Burn Tool

14From the Range dropdown options, select highlights and an exposure of 25% or thereabouts.

15Now go over the edges of the hair to darken (burn) any stray highlights or white halos on the edges.

16The finishing touches: Image>adjustments>levels to increase tonal contrast on the background to match the girl image. This is a quick and dirty fix, As this tute is about the background eraser tool, not levels Position the girl so her eyes are aligned with the horizon, to make the perspective credible. Youre done!