PHOTOSHOPCS6 FAQ How to use skin color selection Tool

For every portrait photographer, digging through Photoshop is probably an unavoidable task. Even if you do not need to "pull" the model out, many times we also need to the character's skin (mainly facial) to do a constituency (or mask), for follow-up landscaping treatment.

I'm afraid we all have to admit that it's not easy to pull a picture or make a selection or a mask. For objects with simple shapes, we have a lot of constituency methods and a powerful tool for pens. But for the characters, most of these tools are ineffective. How many people would have wanted Adobe to develop a portrait-cutout filter, even with the tiniest hairs? But Adobe says it's impossible.

To beautify the characters in the photo, we need to make a selection of the face of the model first.

At the Adobe Creative Suite 6 Roadshow, Michael Stoddart says Adobe will never develop a hair-gouging tool. If you think it's hard to figure out your hair, it's because your method isn't right--the correct way to make a selection in Photoshop is not based on the shape, but on the color. In other words, you should not try to "outline" the edge of the hair with an ant line, but rather the color of the hairs.

The color Range tool in the Select menu.

The color selection tool is not new to Photoshop CS6 and is already available in the previous version, hidden in the "Select" menu.

But CS6 's color-selection tool adds a new feature that can dramatically improve the efficiency of the photographer-choosing skin tones.

Now, with the Color range tool open, we'll see a "skin color" option in the Drop-down menu. Choose "Skin Color", the software will automatically identify the screen in line with the "color" standard colors range. Greatly facilitates the work of the photographer (or the architect).

When color is selected, there is a "detect face" option in the upper-left corner. By selecting it, the software automatically identifies the area in the photo that conforms to the "face" standard and excludes extraneous areas, making the selection of the face more accurate. Based on my experience, this option is highly efficient. Unless you have a special reason, you should always select it.

In the selection Preview menu, we can preview the selection effect on the original photo in a different way. For example, if you select Quick Mask, the areas that are excluded on the original slice are displayed in red (Quick mask). By adjusting the "color tolerance", we can enlarge or shrink the software's judgment on similar colors. The larger the number, the more color range will be selected by the software.

By clicking "OK", we can see that the software has selected the area identified as "Face color". If you are not satisfied with the selection, such as the unrelated areas are also selected, you can use other selection tools to refine, and finally accurately select the entire human face. Now you can perform landscaping work, such as skin whitening or removing blemishes.

In Photoshop before CS6, we can only choose a particular color, and there is little way to pinpoint exactly what area we really need-the face of the person. And CS6 's new "skin-tone" tool solves this problem to a considerable extent. Regardless of the color of the person, the software can be a very high degree of recognition of the choice (enlarge the photo, you'll see that even the tiniest hairs on your face are excluded from the selection, and with "Face Detection" and "color tolerances," We can use one step to limit the range of choices to a more accurate range. Then you just need to continue with some simple adjustments.

Category:

• PS Image Processing