“Novelty” Selection Techniques

To begin, let’s take a look at what I call the “novelty” selection tools and techniques that are available in Photoshop. Despite every new edition of Photoshop touting these features as the hottest addition to the app they’re often seen as pretty amateurish in the industry. Saying that all these basic techniques do have their place, but only if your image has definite edges and plenty of contrast between the pixels you want to keep and those you don’t.

Magic Wand

Nothing screams amateur more than the good old Magic Wand tool. Simply click your wand on the area of an image you want selecting and Photoshop will magically outline it for you ready for editing. The Magic Wand can be handy for those super clean, high resolution photos isolated on white but for anything else the results aren’t up to scratch.

Quick Selection Tool

The next step up from the Magic Wand is the Quick Selection Tool. Instead of allowing Photoshop to do all the calculations, with the Quick Selection Tool you at least give it an idea of the area you want selecting. Results can be more desirable than the Magic Wand, but as the name suggests it’s still only a quick and dirty method.

Lasso Tool/Magnetic Lasso Tool

Although the Lasso Tool is an extremely useful tool in some design workflows it’s not great for clipping out images. It’s easy to use and does the job, which is probably why it’s the most commonly used tool, but its main drawback is its inability to produce smooth curves, as well as being uneditable.

Eraser/Background Eraser/Magic Eraser tool

Another “amateurish” tool in the Photoshop arsenal is the Eraser tool and its reincarnations in recent versions. It’s seen as amateurish because it’s usually the first method Photoshop newcomers employ when removing the background from an image, but it soon teaches you that destructive Photoshop techniques always end in tears.

Advanced masking techniques

If you want to be prepared for any Photoshop clipping challenge that comes your way you’ll need to arm yourself with some advanced techniques. Not every photograph is nicely isolated on a white background, but these three techniques (or a combination of two) will allow you to clip out any image imaginable.

The Pen Tool

The mysterious Pen Tool is often avoided by Photoshop newcomers, but it’s definitely one of the most important tools you should aim to master. The basic principle is the same as the Lasso Tool, manually draw around your subject to make a selection. The Pen Tool’s advantage over the Lasso tool is its ability to create smooth, flowing curves that are editable and can be saved. With the Lasso tool once you’ve made your selection you’re stuck with it, whereas the Pen Tool can be edited/manipulated and saved within the image file for use at a later date.

Select the Pen tool and begin outlining your subject. There’s two methods you could use, the click and drag approach where you pull out bezier handles with each click, or the backtracking technique where you draw a straight path between two points then add in a third point and drag the handles into place.

When outlining with the Pen tool stay within your subject by 1-2px to make sure none of the background leaks into the selection.

Once the path is complete, right click and Make Selection. Alter the Feather Radius to avoid unnatural harsh edges, 0.5-1px is usually a good rule of thumb. Rename the Work Path in the Paths palette to save the path as part of the image so it can be reused later.

Useful for: Clipping out solid objects such as product shots. Masking subjects that don’t have good contract against their background.

Layer Mask

The Layer Mask is the Photoshop Guru’s alternative to the Eraser tool. The Eraser tool is a destructive technique, whereas a Layer Mask can be easily corrected or removed altogether. The great thing about Layer Masks is all of Photoshop’s usual tools can be used to create your mask, so marquee selections, brushes and gradients could all help make the perfect mask. The basic principle behind Layer Masks is black is see through and white is solid, so whatever area of your mask is black will effectively be erased from the image, unless you want it back, in which case you would just paint it white instead.

Click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a mask. A common technique is to use the brush tool to paint out the background of an image just as you would with the eraser tool.

Using brushes, particularly with a pen tablet means you can make natural selections with the help of pen pressure and the softness of your brush tip.

Useful for: Intricate images that would be too tedious to trace with the Pen Tool. Masking images with soft or fuzzy edges.

Channels

The Channels technique can be a lifesaver, but it tends to only work in certain scenarios. If you have an intricate image that retains good contrast the Channels method is the perfect solution. The idea is that you chose either the red, green or blue channel depending on which has the best contrast and you use it to adjust the image tone with the Levels or Curves tools in order to create an easy selection. If you ever work on studio photos of models, the Channels approach will be your best friend for clipping out hair and clothing.

Switch to the Channels palette and toggle between the red, green and blue layers to find the image with the most contrast. Drag your chosen channel into the “New Channel” icon to create a copy.

Use the Levels and Curves adjustment tools to boost the contrast to make the areas you want to keep black and the areas you want to ditch white. Be careful not to go too far otherwise you’ll end up with dirty edges.

Use the burn tool to paint over any outstanding details or highlights that need adding to the mask. As you can see, the channels method picks up on even the finest of hairs, making it a much better choice than a Magic Wand, Pen Tool or Layer Mask selection.

Useful for: Images with good contrast between the subject and background. Perfect for clipping out hair.

Eternal Melody Records by John Duvengar

Google x Collabo Arts by Junichi Tsuneoka

SOYU Zodiac Project by Travis Price

MMX by Karoly Kiralyfalvi

Print Mighty T-Shirt by Anna Johnstone

The final poster design is based on custom motorcycle shop Brass Balls Bobber’s award winning “Tattoo” bike, thanks to a Creative Commons photo by Brett Jordan. The poster combines the motorcycle photography with some vintage style typography and grungy asphalt textures to relate to the hardcore characteristics of the custom motorcycle scene.

View the dark vintage motorcycle poster design

The basis of our motorcycle poster is this fantastic photograph by Brett Jordan. Brett has generously licensed this shot under Creative Commons on his Flickr profile, which allows us to create our own derivative works based on a professional quality image. On first impressions it looks like an easy photo to clip out seeing as the bike is set on a clean background, but unfortunately many of the silver and chrome areas blend in with the grey background, which makes the use of the Magic Wand or the Channels method difficult. An alternative would be to manually trace the bike with the Pen tool, but that would soon become tedious especially around the spokes. Instead we’ll put our Wacom tablets to use and use the best method for this kind of scenario…

Duplicate the background layer and add a Layer Mask, then add a red filled layer underneath it. The best clipping technique for intricate images or those with no hard edges is to paint out the unwanted areas with the brush tool. This is much like using the Eraser except the Layer Mask keeps the technique non-destructive, where you can simply paint back areas if you make a mistake.

Begin by selecting the layer mask and roughly painting away the surrounding area with a large black brush. When working with masks, black will erase areas, whereas painting with white will bring them back.

Set up your brush at around 20px in size with a Hardness of 85%. This will allow enough definition to erase the intricate areas while allowing enough softness to avoid any harsh edges.

Grab your pen and Wacom tablet then set up the Shape Dynamics of your brush to correspond to Pen Pressure. This will make it super easy to paint in those tight areas by simply using less pressure.

Using these new brush settings, begin tracing the outline of the bike. Make the most of Photoshop’s zoom settings to paint away each unwanted pixel.

Use the bracket keys to make the tip size smaller or larger according to the amount of detail around the image.

Once the outline of the bike has been painted away it’s time to tackle the finer details around the frame and wheels.

I prefer to outline a specific area, then fill in the centre, just like colouring in with crayons.

The areas around the spokes will require the most attention, but don’t forget you can roughly paint in the wheel area then switch to white and paint the spoke back in.

Once the bike is completely masked out it can be copied into a new Photoshop document at the correct poster dimensions.

Search online for an asphalt texture and paste it into the background. The grungy texture of asphalt fits in perfectly with the motorcycle theme while adding to the dark raw theme.

Add a subtle Drop Shadow to the bike layer to help it blend with the background a little better. Adjust the Size so there’s no definite outline then drop the opacity until the shadow is barely noticeable.

Paint a line of black using a soft brush on a new layer over where the asphalt texture fades out.

Change the blending mode to Soft Light to darken the lower areas of the motorcycle. Adjust the opacity so the effect just allows the black of the tyres to merge with the black background.

Switch over to Adobe Illustrator to create the typographic element. The free Carnevalee Freakshow font has a pretty cool styling that fits well with the vintage theme.

Convert the text to outlines to allow for manipulation then right click and select Ungroup.

Use guides to mark the width of the first word, then select the letters of each subsequent word and scale them to match while holding the Shift key.

With all three words selected head to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp. In the options select the Rise style at around 12%.

Use the Type tool to add a tilde symbol on the artboard, then convert it to outlines and stretch it into position as a border above the text.

The flow of the border is the wrong way when compared to the flow of the text, so use the Reflect option (Object > Transform > Reflect) to flip it.

Duplicate the border and position it on the lower edge to finish off the typographic element.

Paste the text into the Photoshop document and hit CMD+I to invert it to white. Scale and position the text into place so it sits behind the bike and forms a nice vertical composition.

Change the blending mode of the text layer to Overlay to allow the texture to show through, then duplicate the layer a couple of times to make the text more legible. Change the top layer to Soft Light to tone down the texturing to leave the text much more readable.

This leaves our dark vintage style motorcycle poster complete. The combination of asphalt texture, vintage style typography and the awesome bobber motorcycle all fit together perfectly to relate to that biker’s lifestyle.

Download the source file

Pixelo by Gert van Duinen

Mattrunks by Claire Coullon

Ink Butter by Alan Ariail

Scratch by Sergey Shapiro

Aha-ok by Sergey Shapiro

The Funtasty by Claire Coullon

Geek by Claire Coullon

Thundersnow by Eamae

The Vanity Cover by Sebastian Boros

Serendipity by Garth Humbert

Discourage by Damian King

Get Dough by Nick Slater

Cutter by Nick Slater

Curves are Beautiful by Nick Slater

Snailzilla by Igor Garybaldi

PixelCamp by Claire Coullon

Harmony by Simon Ålander

The Black Gold by Simon Ålander

Method by Claire Coullon

Stoodeo by Sergey Shapiro

Nike T-Shirt by Rubens Cantuni

Authority Blowing Away by Félix Ajenjo

The Crow by Dariusz Markiw

Stormtrooper by Matthew Reilly

Powerpuff Villains by Ruel Jun Andaya

To see how things have changed over the years head back and check out 2011′s 4 year post, 2010′s 3 year post, 2009′s 2 year post, 2008′s 1 year post or 2007′s six months post.

Design wise as you can see I’m still rocking the same old theme design from 2007. As documented in previous anniversary post there’s been little changes here and there with just the header being the only section of the design that has remained pretty much the same. 2009 saw the last major overhaul of the design, since then the site has remained unchanged. Maybe it’s time for another refresh?

Average stats of late

Average visits per day: 21000 (up 3.5k from 2011)
Average pageviews per day: 40,000 (up 6k from 2011)
Top Content: 50 Illustrator Tutorials Every Designer Should See & Huge Collection of T-Shirt Design Mockup Templates
RSS Subscribers: 57,000 (down 1k from 2011)
Highest Traffic Peak: Thursday November 4th 2010 – 32,658 visitors (How To Give Your Photos a Dark Processed Lomo Effect)

It’s great to see the number of daily visitors and pageviews steadily increasing as more and more content is archived into the search engines. My top content is still two roundups of resources. These two posts in particular have 1st place Google positions for their relative topics so I don’t expect to knock them off the top spot anytime soon.

RSS subscriber count has actually dropped since last year. I noted in past overview posts that Feedburner stats on both my blogs suddenly plateaued from October 2010, so whether this is a Feedburner issue or whether people just don’t use RSS anymore I don’t know! Another strange Feedburner stat is that my ‘Reach’ suddenly dropped from over 7000 to less than 150 in the space of one day back in July 2011, and has remained this low ever since (blue line in the above graph).

Technical stats

Powered by: WordPress
Hosted on: 4GB VPS (Frontend) + 1GB VPS (Databases)
Server location: Chicago
Thanks to the W3 Total Cache plugin and some server tweaking from @crouchy, @cleatsandcode and @davidsilburn the average load is around 0.3 and memory usage is around 20%. I could afford to downsize my servers but the extra resources are handy to have should my site experience a large traffic influx.
A recent update to the W3 Total Cache plugin greatly improved my site’s response time too, from around 3000ms down to a snappy 400ms.

Blogging related achievements

In previous anniversary posts I’ve shown how the increased exposure I received from my blog has led to features on design websites and magazines, but I never really talked about how my blog has helped with my overall career.
The first big milestone was back in 2009 when my blog initially reached a stage where it was bringing in freelance projects that allowed me to go self employed. In 2010 I mentioned how my blog had grown enough to allow me to cut down on freelance work, and now I’m running my blogs as my full time job alongside my YouTube gaming channel, which as of late 2011 became partnered with IGN Entertainment.

Creating fun designs tutorials to help people learn new techniques and sharing tips from my favourite video games is by far the best job I could have ever imagined, so thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my content over the years.

It’s difficult to describe this style of artwork without referencing Andy Gilmore’s awesome work. The overall design mixes geometric shapes from the vector linework with vibrant colours and grainy textures to create an intricate design perfect for use as a printed poster or maybe even a band’s album art.

View the final grainy abstract lines design

Open up Adobe Illustrator and use the Pen tool to draw a wavy line on the artboard. Keep the bezier handles long to allow for a smooth curve.

Copy (CMD+C) and Paste in Front (CMD+F) a duplicate of the line, then go to Object > Transform > Reflect. Choose the Vertical option then position the copy next to the original.

Select both items and go to Object > Blend > Make.

Head back to Object > Blend then select the Blend Options menu item. Change the Spacing to Specified Steps and enter a figure of around 80.

Copy and Paste in Front a duplicate of the blend, then hold the Shift key and rotate the copy by 180°.

Paste in two more duplicates of the shape and rotate them so that they overlap equally to form an intricate pattern.

Switch over to Adobe Photoshop and create a new document. Fill the background with black but add a few subtle spots of grey with a large soft brush. Add a Noise filter to produce a grainy effect.

Copy one of the blend shapes from Illustrator and paste it into the Photoshop document. Scale the shape to size before rasterizing it by hitting Enter.

Drag the blend shape layer into the New icon in the layers palette to duplicate the layer, then press CMD+T and rotate each layer to match the pattern originally created in Illustrator.

Select a nice bright blue colour and dab a large soft spot on a new layer. Change the blending mode to Dissolve, then blend this layer with a blank layer to render a cool grainy light spot.

Hold the CMD key and click the thumbnail of the top blend lines shape to load its selection. Press CMD+Shift+I to inverse the selection then delete the excess from the blue spot layer.

Repeat this process with a pink, yellow and a green spot on each quarter of the design.

Load the selection of the nearest blend lines shape and delete out the excess to leave a vibrant copy of the lines that gradually fades out.

Dab a large spot of white on a new layer in the centre of the design then change the blending mode to Dissolve. Merge this layer with another blank layer to render out the dissolve effect.

Add a Layer Mask and use soft brushes to erase away the white grain leaving subtle scatterings around the edge of the main geometric shapes.

Create a new layer and use a large soft brush to add various colours around the design, blending in order of the spectrum.

Change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay to allow the colours to interact with the rest of the design.

Set up your brush with a small soft tip, then use the Pen tool to carefully trace the curvature of one edge of the the geometric shape. Right click and select Stroke Path.

Change this Stroke Path option to Brush and select the Simulate Pressure option. Delete the path then change this layer to Overlay.

Repeat this process of stroking paths to add highlights to the other edges of the design. The Overlay mode does a great job of intensifying the colours.

Use a soft brush to fill in areas of black around the inner portions of the design, then change this layer mode to Soft Light to add more variety in tone.

Press CMD+A to select all and CMD+Shift=C to Copy Merged, then paste the copy at the top of the layer stack. Change the blending mode to Color Dodge and reduce the opacity to tweak the overall vibrancy of the final design.

Download the source file

08-20-2009 by Andy Gilmore

Franks Originale by Mads Berg

The Headless Samurai by Gerrel Saunders

Milk with Knives by Mats Ottdal

Remind Origins by Roberto Ortiz