Once we start using a photo editing tool , little by little, most users start to get bitten by the bug and curious to learn how to do new touch-ups and effects on their photos or start making some kind of montage. It is, therefore, when we need to start using certain tools in addition to the selection to cut out image background, the brushes, the eraser, etc.
One of the things that most often attracts attention is how to cut out an object, person or part of an image by its . That is, just as we would do with scissors if we had the photo in our hands. In this way, later we will be able to add it to another photo in the form of a montage without it being noticed that that object, image or person was not there originally.
Therefore, we are going to see how we can do this in Photoshop in a simple way so that it is available to any user regardless of their knowledge of Photoshop.
How to cut out an image background or person in Photoshop
Photoshop offers us a wide variety of tools to be able to cut out background from image or cut out a person or an object from any image. Depending on the complexity of the image, one tool or another may be better for us. Next, we are going to see which are the most accessible and recommended to carry out this work.
The magic wand
It is one of the most used utilities within the Adobe editing program that is shown by default in the toolbar of the Photoshop work area and that we can choose simply by clicking on it. In case the “quick selection” tool appears instead of the wand, we can switch to this other simply by right-clicking on it.
It is possible that some of you have already tried to make this type of cuts on objects with one color or several, but all of them uniform. In this case, we can select them quickly and easily using the magic wand, since when clicking on a color with it selected, it is capable of selecting everything that is of the same color and is united. In addition, we can add other colors to the selection by keeping the Shift key pressed.
The “tolerance” variable that we find at the top allows us to configure the similarity of color and tone that we can accept. The higher it is, the more shades it will take. A very low value, or a very high one, will cause us to have problems when selecting. We must bear in mind that the greater the color change between the object and the rest of the elements, the more effective the wand will be when selecting.
This tool will only be useful for very simple and basic cases and will not be useful for cutting out the of more complex objects with a lot of color mixing, such as the of a person. It is possibly the most used tool by those who are taking their first steps with the Adobe program, since it will allow us to obtain good results in the most favorable situations.
Quick Selection
Within the same section as the magic wand we will find another tool: the quick selection .
What this tool will allow us to do is select everything that, depending on the tool, may belong to the same object or element. To do this, it looks at changes in color and texture so that the selection precision is as precise as possible. We simply have to click on the element, and drag the mouse so that all the content is automatically selected.
If we make a mistake, and select parts that don’t belong, we can deselect them using the brushes above, to add or remove elements to the selection.
AI object selection
The object selection tool is located in the same panel as the wand and quick selection, and leaves it up to the AI to automatically select the desired object. To do this, we simply have to create a box around the object that we want to be selected and, when we release the mouse, this object will already be selected automatically.
Photoshop Pen Tool
If what we want is a professional result, what we are going to do is use the Pen tool . This sits above the Type tool, and we need to make sure it’s in path mode .
cut with photoshop
With it we are going to click on a point of what we want to cut out. At that moment we see how a small square appears and from there we are going to click on the object or person that we want to cut out until we completely border it.
It must be said that the closer together we make the clicks, especially in rounded areas, the better the cut will be, since the final of the cut will be formed by the straight lines that join all those squares. It is true that with the pen tool we can make selections with rounded shapes, but we will see it in another tutorial in detail.
cut out with photoshop Subject Selection
Another very quick way to select a person, or an object, is to use the subject selection function. This option makes use of Artificial Intelligence to automatically select the subject (or subjects) of a photo. In this way, instead of having to select the photo little by little, we can automatically select everything with a couple of clicks.
Photoshop Subject Selection – 1
It works with people, with animals and even with objects. And in the latest versions of Photoshop it offers spectacular precision.
Lastly, we can export the image as a PNG . This is an image format with lossless compression that allows us, in exchange for a somewhat larger size, to have an image with better quality. This format is also compatible with the alpha layer, so it will respect the transparency that we have worked on in the previous steps. In this way, when we want to use our image in a project, or make a photomontage, we can add it directly to Photoshop, already having the transparent background configured.
