Monday 28 January 2013

Cutting the fringe – Selective Colour in Photoshop

Originally posted at TipSquirrel.com
Photoshop Nut : 
Scot Baston


I encountered a little problem the other day while creating something in Photoshop.. not my usual photography but pulling some low resolution text from a black background. Normally the route would be to create a selection and to use refine mask to remove any stray edges of the background. In this case the text was so small and with the compression on the original file, the refine edge option was not working for me, especially when you add in the complexity of the shape. Below is an example of what I had to work with..

cuttingthefringe

my final image would be on a white background, so lets try the normal route first
  cuttingthefringe2
As you can see, selecting the black background and using refine edge did not create the best result when shown on a white background. I'm sure better could be achieved by taking the time, zooming in to the text and using the refine edge brush around each of the letters.. but who has time for that? First steps first.. lets select the text from the black background. Using the Magic Wand tool (W), set the tolerance to around 10 and uncheck the contiguous checkbox.. then select the black background

  cuttingthefringe4 

 With the Background selected, create an inverted layer mask by holding down the Alt key and clicking the 'add layer mask' button at the bottom of the layer mask panel.

cuttingthefringe5
 

 Adding a simple white background layer underneath the cut out layer shows our current text with accompanying black fringe.

cuttingthefringe6
 

 So how to get rid of the horrible black fringe without losing the feel of the text and without spending ages refining the mask. My solution was to use the Selective Colour Adjustment Layer...

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