• Main Page
• Site map

• Tutorials:
• All tutorials
• photo retouch
• photo montage
• photo renovation
• other techniques

• Photoshop essentials:
• working with layers
• selection

• Tips & tricks
• Brushes installation
• Shapes installation

• Download room
• forum ranks

• Your views

Difficulty level:

Meaning of colors: menu path, keyboard shortcut

---

Replacing the photo background

---

Please read precisely the description of the consecutive actions. Often there are a lot of questions in comments which are answered in tutorial content. While working with Photoshop - rush is not recommended.

---

1. Open the Photoshop program.

2. Open two photos purposed to processing (one by one): File » Open or Ctrl + O
...or by double clicking the left mouse button on the dark grey application background.

The first will be a base photo, the second will be background.
The one with the background you can minimize - it won’t be needed for now (dash icon on the photo bar).

3. We have to remove the background from the base photo, leaving only the figure (a women with a lily).
I’ll describe a method of removing a background - which is the best for every kind of background - regardless of it is uniform or differentiated. We’ll use the Extract filter. OK, let’s use it..
Choose: Filter » Extract from the program menu or press: Alt + Ctrl + X keys. The filter window will be opened - preview.
Choose the Edge Highlighter Tool (B) from there. Use it to outline the figure contour. Draw so the contour is inside the line. Therefore select the appropriate tool thickness (kay [ ) or (key ] ). By doing it you are telling the program where the edges are.

While you are outlining - remember to go to the edge of the picture (if the figure reaches or protrudes it) or about closing the outline (if the whole figure fits in the picture). In my example the figure protrudes edges. It has a great influence on a next step. Don’ forget about closed areas where background needs to be cut out (on following picture - the hand bend and the area between fingers).

Having an outline we have to fill it using the Fill Tool (G). Fill the figure. Program will remove everything what is besides the marked contour. Doing it we are indicating the area destined to remove.
So we have the Fill Tool - click it inside the figure. Effect:

Everything besides the blue filling will be removed. Click OK in the filter window.

We are back in the edition window. As we see - the background was removed (chequered background - it says us that there is nothing in this area).

4. Now we’ll insert the second photo as the background. It is minimized somewhere in the lower left corner or the program ;) Restore it (the icon with two squares). Now we have two photos in the edition window. Select all the area of the background photo - press Ctrl + A keys, and copy it: Ctrl + C. Now we can close the background photo.
Go to the image with the figure and paste the earlier copied background to it: Ctrl + V. As we can see the background was pasted but it covers the figure:

It happened because program always pastes new element to the new layer, which is created specially for that purpose. You can see it on the following image (layers panel). So we have to move the layer with pasted background under the layer containing figure. Click on the background layer and holding the mouse button drag it under the figure layer - when the thickened line appears under the figure layer appears - release the mouse button - preview.

Now it's good:

Often happens that the Extract filter cuts of more than we wanted to. It occurs when there is a small difference between colours in selected areas. Now, when darker background is pasted, it is noticeable:

We have to fix it - restoring these fragments to the state before the filter edition. We’ll accomplish it using History Brush Tool (Y). Choose it from the toolbox. Now we have to choose from which step of processing it has to restore the image in specified place. Go to the History bookmark and click on the empty field on the left side of the history step. In our case it is the photo opening step (above the bar) - preview.
Now go to damaged fragment and fill it - drawing with the history brush (only the damaged area - nothing more).
That’s better :) It’s not over. We can see artefacts in the flower area lasting from the removed background, because the lily is virtually the same colour as removed background. I was drawing the line there at random - because I couldn’t see where ends lily and starts background.

Remove the vestiges using the: Eraser Tool (E). After the erasing you can move above the contours using the history brush. It is the effect:

Almost ready. Now we’ll blur the background to give to our photo the depth of focus effect.

5. In the Layers bookmark - click on the background layer (it will highlight with blue - it means it is currently active). Choose: Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur.
In the filter window (preview) set the slider to about 5 pixels (depending on needs).
Now it’s nice :D … but it can be beautiful. Let’s enhance shadows to make the figure has deeper colours.
Click on the layer that contains figure. Choose: Image » Adjustments » Levels from the menu or press: Ctrl + L. Move the left triangle under the graph corresponding to shadows to the right preview

Finished photo:

The end.