How to Use Refine Edge Technique in Adobe Photoshop in Best Way?

When working with complex images such as photos of people and animals, or landscapes full of trees, detail selection may prove to be difficult. This guide will teach you how to use one of the most efficient tools for this kind of photo retouching service, the Refine Edge Tool available in Adobe Photoshop, in order to extract an object from its background.

Why and When To Use It

The Photoshop Refine Edge Tool is the optimal solution in all those situations when it is necessary to extract images with detailed contours from their background. For example, this is the case of people with loose hair, furry animals, or forests. Traditional, simple Selection Tools will not suffice when working with such complicated subjects. On the contrary, they will make your resulting image look unrefined, and so your hard work will seem sloppy.

Just bear in mind that Clipping Path services’ result is different from the one provided by Pixel Masks because they have different features. Clipping Paths are the perfect solution to contour objects, but they do not work as well to realize the blurred edges hairs and furs need: objects generally have clear and sharp outlines, while hairs only look natural with soft contours. The path needed for the clipping may be designed using the Pen Tool, in order to obtain a clean, natural-looking result.

How To Use It

Whether you are planning to use a Clipping Path or a Pixel Mask, the first step in the edge-refining process is the object selection. Adobe Photoshop provides a large group of tools to do just this, such as the Quick Selection tool or the Magic Wand Tool: this can be used to select the background around an object, and then you only need to use the Invert Selection button to select your object instead of its background.

Now it is possible to begin using the Refine Edge Tool in order to define the image’s contours: you may open the dialogue box by clicking on Select – Refine Edge, or you may use a keyword shortcut (ctrl+alt+R for Windows users, cmd+opt+R for Mac users). In the View Mode box there are seven options:

– Marching Ants (the selection gets surrounded by marching ants)
– Overlay (the selection gets overlaid by the default light red layer mask)
– On Black (the unselected area gets filled in black)
– On White (the unselected area gets filled in white)
– Black & White (the selected area gets filled in white, the unselected one in black)
– On Layers (the unselected area becomes transparent, with the checkerboard in the background)
– Reveal Layer (this mode displays the image without selections)

After applying the appropriate option to your image, you may then proceed with the actual edge refining. To do this you have five options at your disposal:

– Smooth (the selection gets smoothed; inadvisable when selecting trees, hair or fur)
– Feather (the selection gets softened; useful to get a vignette effect)
– Contrast (the edge of the selection gets sharpened)
– Shift Edge (the edge of the selection gets shifted so that the selection gets either contracted or expanded)
– Decontaminate Color (leftover colored pixels around the edge of the selection are significantly reduced by means of substitution with the color of the nearby pixels)

Refine Edge technique when coupled with good clipping paths can work wonders with an image when it comes to extracting any kind of product or human models from a background. These techniques like refine edge, alpha channel masking is an essential for any Company providing Clipping Path Services.