How to Separate a Subject from its Background using Photoshop

  

                   

Today i would like to share how to separate a subject from it's background. In this tutorial I've created a better subject separation when I edited my chimpanzees photo. So, why not have a try...

        
               

I wanted to blur the background even more and simulate a shallow depth-of-field effect that you would get with a larger aperture opening (smaller f-number) . The first thing that I've tried is to use the 'Magic wand tool' to properly select the areas around the chimpanzees, excluding the rocks. The problem with this technique is that even if you choose the appropriate  'Tolerance' number, still, the contrast between the subject and the background is not high enough. It means that when I've selected the areas with tolerance at 25 (anti-alias: checked, contiguous: checked), some areas were selected ok and some didn't (see reference image below).

As you can see in the above image, in high contrast areas like the brown background, the magic wand tool did a good job. On the other hand, where the contrast was low, the magic want tool didn't do a good job and captured the hair and fur inside the subject area. Although there are special masking tools to make fine selections (ie. Corel KnockOut2), I didn't want to spend $99 just for this image (although a trial is available). If I'll have more images likes that, I will consider buying Corel KnockOut2 for its better masking capabilities.

In order to make a finer and more accurate selection, I've used the 'Polygonal lasso tool'  in Adobe Photoshop in order to manually create a contour selection that surrounds my subject (ie. the chimpanzees).

I spent around 5 minutes to make that selection. I didn't care if it wasn't 100% accurate, especially in the left part of the image where the background didn't have many distrusting elements.

Now, after the subject has been selected, I had two options: 1) masking the subject by clicking the 'Add vector mask' button in the 'Layers' tab or blurring the background when the selection is still active. I've decided to go with the fast path, just apply a quick 'Lens blur' filter.

Before I explain about the next steps, take a look at the subject (part of it) after masking it using Adobe Photoshop CS5.

I've uploaded the image just to show how well the subject was masked after manually selecting it using the polygonal lasso tool in Photoshop.

Before I've applied the 'Lens blur' filter to the selected background, I've applied feathering (From the top menu: Select → Refine Edge) and applied a 1.8px feather upon the selection to make a more transparent blurring between the subject and the surrounding background. In some areas I've actually used a combination of the Polygonal and Magic want tool. After I've selected the subject using the Polygonal tool, I've made more sub-selections with the magic want, but minor selections.

TIP: If you already spent some time manually selecting your subject, DO NOT FORGET to save the selection as a new channel (Menu: Select → Save Selection).

OK, now it's time for some beautiful blurry background effect. For that, I've decided to use Adobe Photoshop filter called 'Lens Blur' (From the top menu: Filter → Blur → Lens Blur...) - see screenshot below.

TIP: Before you apply any filter to the original image, duplicate it and work on the new layer. Even though you can revert back the changes, the history might be limited in the settings or you might save the PSD file and won't be able to restore the changes you've made earlier.

The lens blur as a few properties. I won't get into details about them here, so just play with it until you get the desired effect.

Here is a Before and After image that demonstrated the change (cropped from 100% scale)..

As you can see in the above image, the results are very impressive. There is a minor loss of details and tiny artifacts, but you won't notice it when view the image at smaller size. You can see that the selection allowed me to isolate the subject, even every hair shaft has been isolated from the background. I could have blurred the background completely or even apply a different image instead of the current background. You can get very creative here!

Here is the image after applying the 'Lens Blur' filter in Adobe Photoshop!

After

 

             

                    

Hope you can learn something new from this tutorial.
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Reference: digitalphotographywriter