This week’s project was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Just kidding but not really. I re-watched the video’s over and over just trying to figure out how to get the fox into the other picture. Finally I succeeded but the fox is transparent and I did a terrible job at the edges. One roadblock I came across is that the photoshop in the videos had certain features I couldn’t find on mine. For example the auto select button at the top, couldn’t find it. I’m calling my image Ghost Fox with Grass Still Attached.
Week 3- Montage
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I really struggled with importing photos when I started working with Photoshop too. If you’re on a Mac and are trying to figure out where a particular tool lives, feel free to reach out. For edges of images (particularly hairy people/creatures) there’s a pretty great feature called “select and mask” that will intuit where it thinks the edges of your image are – and it gets smarter the more you use it!
I do like the ghostly impression that you got with your fox though. When I think of ghosts, I usually think of human ones, but it’s pretty fun to imagine seeing foxes around corners and sunbathing. What’s the fox’s unfinished business? Your choice of animal with background is pretty spot on too. That fox is definitely basking in light coming from that direction and looks pleased as punch about it.
Hi Kate. As Sophie mentions, Select and Mask is the interface to use after using the quick select tool to refine your selection. Or, if there is a clear subject (fox) in the image, you can simply click Select and Mask then you can click on ‘Select Subject’ (top of screen inside Select and Mask). It is not perfect with furry critters though so some cleanup of your selection happens at that point. I posted a few extra tutorial links in the ‘Additional Resources’ area specifically about selecting items and using the select and mask interface.
Furry critters, hairy humans also, are a real challenge to get clean selections on. Zooming in and out on the subject (use Cmd/Ctl +/- key commands for fastest zooming and unzooming) will help with knowing what has really been selected. Also, get to know the options available for brushes for using any of the selection tools – the ‘Hardness’ of your brush, the brush shape and its size all affect how your selections work.
Also, know that there are many different ways to make the initial selection for masking but once you have done that, the Select and Mask interface is always the tool you use to refine what you selected.
Hope that’s helpful! 🙂