Replacing a Background with Photoshop Elements

This Photoshop Elements 5.0 lesson will demonstrate how you can replace the background in any of your digital photos. Along the way you'll also learn how to use the Magic Selection Brush Tool to make selections, how to save and load selections, how to do some simple color correction/adjustments and how to get started with Layers.

Replacing a Background with Photoshop Elements

NOTE: This Photoshop Elements lesson was created using Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, but you can achieve the same results using other versions.

Getting Started

To get started run Photoshop Elements and choose Edit/Enhance to bring up the Photoshop Elements Editor.

You'll also need a couple of photographs... a portrait and a background that you can use to place the portrait subject against. You can see from the figure above that I'll be using a "studio portrait" (this is really just a simple digital portrait taken against a blank wall) and a photograph of a sunset (taken on an afternoon walk... a good reason to have your camera handy :)).

What needs to be done is to isolate the portrait subject so that she can be copied and pasted over the sunset... fun stuff, so let's get started.

Using the Magic Selection Brush Tool

Photoshop Elements has a very powerful, yet easy-to-use selection tool called the "Magic Selection Brush Tool", that helps isolate portions of an image. Isolating one part of an image from the rest of it means that you can selectively modify portions of an image. This lesson will demonstrate several of the Magic Selection Brush Tool's options.

With both of your images open activate the portrait image by clicking its title bar.

Select the Magic Selection Brush Tool (see figure 1.1).

figure 1.1 -- The Magic Selection Brush Tool

When you do so you'll be presented with a dialog box offering some helpful tips on how to use the tool (see figure 1.2).

figure 1.2 -- The Magic Selection Brush Tool tips dialog box

After making note of the information the dialog box is so helpfully providing click OK to close it.

One significant piece of information offered is that modifications to the selection can be made in the Tool Options Bar. The Tool Options Bar (see figure 1.3) is located along the top of the Editor window just below the main menu. The options change for every tool and it's a good practice to take a look at it when using a new tool, or even when using a tool you're more familiar with. The options we're most concerned with are adding to and removing from a selection. These will make getting the best selection as painless a process as possible.

figure 1.3 -- The Magic Selection Brush Tool Options

We pretty much have the tools we need to select the background and the info we need to use them effectively...

The idea, with the Magic Selection Brush, is to paint areas that you want to be selected. In this case painting the background in the portrait will select the background making it possible to isolate the portrait subject.

You can really just go wild and paint wherever you want an area selected. I like to be a little more careful, though, to see what the tool does and how it operates.

You can see in figure 1.4 that I made a small squiggle in the upper-left corner of the background.

figure 1.4

In figure 1.5 you can see that all of the background is selected... unfortunately so was some of the portrait subject :) Not to worry. Here's where the tool's options (refer back to figure 1.3 for a quick peek) come in.

figure 1.5

In the Magic Selection Brush Tool Option bar select the icon with the minus sign (-) in it. Drawing over selected areas with that option on will remove areas from the selection. I drew a number of squiggly lines, each time removing some of the selected portrait. You can see the marks I made with the tool in figure 1.6.

figure 1.6

After making the adjustments my selection seems pretty good as you can see in figure 1.7.

NOTE: If, while unselecting some areas you accidentally unselect too much, simply adjust the option to add to the selection instead of removing from it (click the icon in the Tool Options with the small plus sign (+)).

When you're satisfied with the selection you've created you can proceed...

figure 1.7

The thing is, I really want to select the portrait subject, not the background... again, no problem. All that needs to be done is for the selection to be inverted. To do so choose Select, Inverse.