In this lesson we’re going to learn how to remove the background from a portrait. Being able to change the background behind your portrait subject is a fun skill to have and not too difficult to master. This lesson takes a little more patience than some of my previous lessons, but even a beginner can get this if they follow along.
We’re going to be using the Photoshop extract tool, as well as the history brush and eraser for this lesson.
Lesson:
Open your picture which contains the person or object you wish to extract. I’m going to use this photograph of a college girl.
Now click “Filter” at the top of Photoshop and select “Extract”. Press B to ensure you have the highlighter tool selected. Trace a line around your subject with half the line on the subject and the other on the background. (hint: draw only small sections of line at a time. If you make a mistake you can just undo by pressing Ctrl-Z or Option-Z on a mac).
Photoshop Extract Screen
Your image should look about like the one on the right. Next you want to press G for the bucket (fill) tool. How Adobe figured G stands for bucket I’ll never guess, but it does. Now click somewhere inside of the green line you just traced (don’t forget to close the pattern first by tracing along the side edges.) If your whole picture turns blue, it means your subject isn’t completely enclosed by your edge border.
You should now have a picture with a green line around it and a blue tint inside the line. Click OK if you’re happy with your selection.
Girl Extracted
Check out the picture you’ve extracted, it should look something like the one to the right. Pay extra close attention to the hair. You’ll notice that certain parts of the portrait have dropped out of the image. Don’t worry too much about the drop-outs as long as the edge of the hair looks good. Notice I didn’t say perfect, we’ll touch it up in a minute.
You can redo the Photoshop Extraction filter from scratch if you’re not happy with the results, but trust me, my picture doesn’t look as good as it does on this tiny little image. We’re going to fix everything in the next few steps.
You can fix most of the missing parts of the image just by creating a new copy layer (remember: it’s Ctrl-J or Command-J on a mac). Amazing right? Once you have your new copy layer, turn the opacity on the new layer down to about 90% in the Layers Palette.
Only a couple of quick steps left. Press Y to select the History Brush Tool. With your history brush you can paint “history” onto your photo. Basically it restores your photo to what it looked like when you first opened it, but only where you paint.
I threw a bright background up behind my photo so I can see clearly what I’m doing. You can do this by creating a new layer and dragging it beneath your subject layer in the layers palette. Fill your new background layer with red, orange, or another high contrast color.
Now Find the areas which have detail removed which should have stayed. Paint over those areas with the history brush and all the detail comes back like magic! Cool huh? Last but not least, use a small eraser tool to erase anything in the picture which obviously should not be there.
Find a cool background for your subject and you’re done! Whew, if you followed along and were diligent about the quality of your work, you should have something that looks about like my end result below. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for the purpose of this tutorial. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s lesson. Please comment if you need clarification on anything or you can think of a way to improve this tutorial.
15 Comments
Hey Jeremy
Awesome tutorial which helped me a lot!
Thanks!
One of the quickest ways to remove or change backgrounds.
One suggestion if you could add to the tutorial:
It is a good idea to INCREASE the canvas size by say 20 pixels on all sides. That way you do not hurt the borders which you want to retain. Like the bottom left and bottom in the example above.
When you highlight you can then use the increased canvas width.
The added canvas helps you retain the girls shoulder and pendant!
Like I am!
She will also be happier!
Thanks again Jeremeiah!
Me Paparazzi
That’s a wonderful idea! I don’t know why I never thought to do that. Thanks for the great comment.
Totally amazing tutorial. Best I’ve seen. Going to bookmark your site. Excellent. Thank you.
Wow, thanks for the huge compliment! Glad you enjoyed it.
How do you remove portrait waterproof marks on proof pictures?
Tutorial was good until I got to the history brush. At that stage an error message came: ‘could not use this history brush because no history state has been designated as the source of painting’. I looked back to the tutorial but nothing was mentioned there.
hi
just a small question – how do I add the new background to the back of the new photo??
thanks
Thanks!
You just create a new layer in your layers palette and make sure it’s below the layer with your image on it. Then just past a new image onto the new layer. Viola!
It’s usually too tedious of a process.
Nigel
I had a similar problem. You need to go to the ‘Window’ menu and open the ‘History’ window. You can ‘designate a history state’by clicking next to one of the editing stages which are displayed in that window.
In PS CS5.5 there is no Extract on the Filters menu (in Windows)! Am i just an idiot or was it moved. The help wasn’t much help.
Thanks
That’s because CS5 has removed the extract tool, although you can have it installed separately. CS5 has moved to the Refine Edge model. I’ll write a tutorial on this when I become more familiar with it, but in the meantime, you can watch a video here:
http://layersmagazine.com/photoshop-cs5-refine-edge.html
i can understand upto the history brush tool step but after i dont know how to continue…. pls explain the steps after that ellaboratly….
Thank you for taking the time to do this. I’ve only done this 1 time and someone had to show me, so this was very helpful.
Phyllis