Refine edges (2)

The first thing I do in this example, is to change the edge of the skin with the background as it is a bit too smooth and a bit too obscure.

Select the “Zoom” tool from the “Refine Edge” panel and click on the picture, then you can get a clearer picture of what you’re doing.

Double click “Zoom” tool to return to 100% view.

Hold the Alt key on your keyboard pressed when you want to zoom-in.

Select the “Hand” tool when you want to navigate the image.

Then we’re going to her with a decent selection, or rather ‘transparency’.   Now it looks like they have a hairnet on her head, so this is better.

I will discuss all possible options, but this is different for each image. So you can find something that gives you the best results.

The first option is the “Edge Detection”.

When the slide lever (A) of the beam moves to the right, more detail of the hair will be shown (1). The more you move it to the right, the more detail will be displayed.

Problem here, however, is that when the lever is too far to the right, the background under the skin of the person sometimes can shine through (2).

This does not make the edge of the selection to change, but it alters the thickness of the edge which is expanded on both sides of the edge.

So by clicking and dragging the slider handle, Photoshop automatically makes refinements on both sides of the border of the selection.

You can see this edge when you select the “Show Radius” mode.
The higher the pixels set for the radius, the thicker the edge.

However, when I change the radius of the edge, it will adapt the edge to the skin, and the edge to the hair. Or in other words, the edges everywhere.

In this example, it is not really what we want.

We can solve this by selecting the “smart radius” option.

When this is selected, Photoshop will automatically determine how wide the edge must be at different places in the picture.

As you can see, it set a thin edge around the skin (A), and a wider border around the hair (B).

When we see the effect in the image by checking the “Show Radius” off, we see that the result is reasonable, but it can be even better.

We do this in the next lesson.

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