Photoshop Mask for Making Selections

1. crisderaud1 December 2010, 1:57 GMT +01:00

Many of the object photos on this site are on a white background and people often are frustrated trying to separate the object from the white background so they can place the object on their site or in a composition.

The frustration is often due to using the magic wand tool or quick selection tool to get the dotted line (marching ants) to follow closely around the object and not leave a white halo around the edge that can be seen in it's new setting.

Using a channel mask is a quick and easy way to make a clean, tight selection around the object once you learn the basic steps.
- duplicate blue channel
- invert blue channel (make it a negative reversing white for black)
- radical levels adjustment to make the whites whiter and the darks black (eliminating gray pixels)
- clean up mask with brush tool set to black or white so you have a perfect silhouette
- command or control click to load mask selection
- return to image in Photoshop which is now selected and adjust mask edge using Refine Mask
- Jump selection to a layer of transparency (ctrl or cmd + J)
You can also use the move tool to place it directly into another image.

For tutorials on this go to: http://www.google.com/search?q=photoshop+channel+masking&tbo=p&tbs=vid:1&source=vgc&hl=en&aq=0&oq=Photoshop+Channel+Mask

or just search Google Videos for "Photoshop Channel Mask" and there are over 3,000 to show you the technique.