Layer masks are useful tools for a variety of tasks in Photoshop. They are non destructive and easily manipulated. This tutorial shows you how you can use layer masks to remove the background of an image in a photo.
Select a photo. Make a duplicate (Image>Duplicate) and close the original.
Use CTRL+J to create a duplicate and hide the bottom photo layer
To add a mask to the photo, find and click the mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This adds a white rectangle to the layer.
Ensure your foreground color is set to black and background to white (Press D on your keyboard). Select the brush tool and choose a basic hard round brush. Start with a brush of reasonable size to remove the larger areas of the image.
Click on the layer mask in the layers palette to select it. If you don’t remember this step you will find that black paints onto your picture.
Use the brush and paint over the larger areas you wish to remove. You will begin to see the transparency underneath and on the layer palette you will see that the areas you are brushing over become black.
Once you have deleted the larger areas, zoom in to the image, select a smaller brush size and begin to brush the areas to create an extraction. You may want to soften the edge of the brush slightly.
Continue, changing the brush size as necessary to create the extraction.
If you accidently erase an area that you wanted to keep, using a layer mask makes it simple to correct. Simply switch the fore and back ground colors and with brush now white paint over the area you wish to be restored. Switch the fore and back ground colors again to continue removing areas. Here I have accidently removed too much of her hand, by switching the foreground to white I can brush over the areas to restore them and then switch back to black and try again.
Here is the masked subject.
To check for stray pixels, create a new layer above the Background image and fill it with a color that contrasts with the photo. Use the black brush on the mask to then remove the strays.
When the extraction is complete you have two options,
Right click on the layer mask and choose Apply Layer Mask. This combines the layer mask with the image to create the selection.
or
Right click on the layer mask and choose Add Layer Mask to selection. Use Ctrl+J to then create your selection on a new layer. This will leave the Layer mask intact.
Edit the image as desired and then resite the image.
(Background Image © Steve Walters; motion blur added)
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