Refine a mask in Photoshop for iPad
Use Refine Edge to perfect a mask of a person, including soft edges of hair.
Published
Introduction
Hello, my name is Russell Preston Brown from Adobe.
And this tutorial is all about the Refine Edge feature that's been added to Adobe Photoshop for the iPad.
In this project, I want to demonstrate this feature and perhaps show you some of my favorite tips and techniques for working with the Refine Edge tool.
Now, of course, Refine Edge has been available on the desktop for quite a while, but now, it's available here on the iPad.
In this project, I'm going to start with this mad scientist you see here, and I'm going to extract him from his original image and place him into this new surrounding using Refine Edge.
Let's get started.
Let's go back here to my original mad scientist right here.
I'm targeting this layer.
And over here to the left in my Tool panel, I'm tapping here on the Lasso Tool
Creating an initial subject selection
to reveal all my other Selection Tools and Select Subject.
Tapping on that, you can quickly select the subject within your image, and it does a great job.
Now, this has made a fantastic selection of the mad scientist.
But if you needed to make adjustments, for example, I could use the Lasso Tool and add or subtract from the selection before I open up the Refine Edge feature.
This looks great, so let's move forward.
Opening refine edge and setting up the brush
Right down here under More, you can reveal Refine Edge right here.
You have all the tools here that you would find on the desktop, the Edge detection and Global refinements right here.
Let's start off right now with one of my favorite tips and techniques.
Over here, under my Brush settings, right here under these three dots, you can see that my Hardness value is at 100% for my brush.
I prefer a hardness value of 100%, I think I get better results, and you should try this as well.
That's tip and technique number one.
Let's move forward.
Over here to the right, I'm going to be working with Edge detection.
Let's toggle that down.
Up here, under View mode,
Refining complex edges with smart radius and view modes
I like to select Black and white from all of these settings.
I'm going to select that right now.
This gives me a black and white preview of the selected region.
I can see the mask very clearly using this technique.
And this is where I'm going to start the project.
Over here, I'm going to turn on Smart radius.
Now, every project is different when you're working on refining the edge of a mask.
But I find Smart radius works well for this project, and of course, you should experiment turning it on and off while you're working on your project, and see if it helps make the results better.
Next, I'm going to move the Edge detection radius over to the right until I start to see the edges of the hair.
Not too far.
That looks great.
Now, you can see over here to the left, my Brush Size is set to 290, that's pretty good size.
And I'm on the Add to the selection, the plus sign here.
So, this is how it works, of course.
I'm going to go in and refine the edge.
In this case, by moving my Apple Pencil around the edge to refine that edge and get better results.
Opening up the mask in these edges around the hair.
Over here, I'm going to select the minus sign.
I now want to refine the edge of the hard edges here of the hands and the outfit that the mad scientist is wearing.
I'm going to pause for a moment, and see what my results look like, and then paint once again to remove some of the details around the ears here.
It's moving in a little bit too far there.
This is starting to look great.
However, next, I'm going to adjust my View mode.
This is my super user tip and technique number two, I'm going to set this to Overlay.
This will then reveal any areas that you may need to adjust.
With the plus sign selected over here on my Brush Tool, I see some problems here when I zoom in on the hair.
There's some dark regions in this area.
I'm going to tap once again to open those up.
I see some areas here on the left as well.
So, you can refine this mask around the hair, so that there aren't any gaps or areas where the hair isn't showing through.
I also see some problems where I went too far.
So, I'm going to select the minus tool.
And once again, make a few corrections here by tapping on the image.
I can go back and forth with these two tools until I get it to look just right.
This looks great.
Let's zoom back out to see my whole image.
We're now ready to proceed forward.
The next most important thing in a project like this
Decontaminating colors and outputting the final mask
is to select Decontaminate colors right here.
I want the colors from the hair to bleed into the background under the mask, so I don't have any fringing or dark edges to the hair.
We're starting to look really good.
I could go in and do some Global refinements, smoothing, feathering, contrast, or shift the edge, but I don't think they're necessary here.
So, I'm now going to make one more selection down here.
Output as, I'm going to set it to New layer with mask right here.
I choose this so I have a new layer created to compare it to my original or to make different versions.
You can choose any of these but I've chosen a New layer with mask.
And finally, we can go up here to select Done.
Check this out.
I now have a really amazing mask that I've created by using Refine Edge here in Adobe Photoshop for the iPad.
You've just learned some great new tips and techniques, I hope, when you're using this feature on the iPad or on the desktop version of Adobe Photoshop.
Give it a try.
What you learned:
Make a selection, refine the resulting mask, and use the mask to replace the background.
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