Lifestyle Shot: Selecting the Shirt

Topics Covered in This Photoshop Tutorial:

Loading Selections, Creating Another Channel, Using Hue/Saturation to Colorize the Shirt, Making Rough Selections with the Lasso Tool

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

In this exercise, we'll create a precise shirt selection by leveraging the skin channel we built in the previous lesson. Since the shirt and skin share numerous edge boundaries, this technique demonstrates how professional retouchers maximize efficiency by reusing existing selections. This approach not only saves time but maintains consistency across your masking workflow—a crucial skill when working under tight client deadlines.

Roughing Out the Selection

We'll begin by creating a rough selection of the shirt area, then refine it using our existing skin channel. This two-step approach ensures accuracy while maintaining speed.

1. If it's not still open, re-open yourname-lifestyle.psd.

2. Because the skin selection shares extensive edge boundaries with the shirt, we can intelligently repurpose it for our shirt selection. As shown below, use the Lasso to create a rough selection around the entire shirt area. Don't worry about precision at this stage—slightly sloppy edges are perfectly acceptable since we'll refine them in the next steps.

   

3. Now we'll subtract the skin channel from our rough shirt selection to create clean boundaries. Go to Select > Load Selection.

4. Configure the Load Selection dialog with the following settings:

   Channel:	skin
   Operation:	Subtract from Selection

5. Click OK.

   NOTE: For faster workflow, you can accomplish this same operation using keyboard shortcuts. Hold Cmd–Option (Mac) or CTRL–ALT (Windows) and click directly on any channel in the Channels panel to subtract that selection from your current active selection. This shortcut becomes invaluable when working with complex, multi-layered selections in professional Photoshop workflows.

Refining the Selection

With our basic shirt selection established, we'll now save it as a channel and refine the edges using targeted painting techniques.

1. To preserve this selection for future refinement, navigate to the Channels panel and click the Save selection as channel button at the bottom of the panel.

2. Name the new channel shirt to maintain clear organization in your project.

3. Deselect the current selection by pressing Cmd–D (Mac) or CTRL–D (Windows). This allows us to work directly on the channel without active selection boundaries interfering with our view.

4. Select the shirt channel in the Channels panel and show the composite RGB channel. This gives you a clear overlay view for precise refinement work.

5. Using a soft brush, carefully paint away any unwanted areas where the selection captured too much of the surrounding image. Focus particularly on areas where fabric meets skin or background elements.

   Remember the fundamental channel painting rule: painting with white removes areas from the selection, while painting with black adds areas to the selection. Use varying brush opacities for subtle edge transitions that will create more natural-looking results in your final colorization.

Colorizing the Shirt

Now we'll apply our refined selection to colorize the shirt using Hue/Saturation adjustment layers—a non-destructive approach that maintains maximum flexibility for future edits.

1. Hide the shirt channel to return to normal RGB viewing mode.

2. Hold Cmd (Mac) or CTRL (Windows) and click the shirt channel to load it as an active selection. You'll see the familiar marching ants indicating your selection is now active.

3. In the Layers panel, add a new Adjustment layer and choose Hue/Saturation. The adjustment layer will automatically inherit your shirt selection as its layer mask, ensuring the color changes affect only the shirt area.

4. In the Properties panel, check the Colorize option to enable color replacement mode. Experiment with the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders to achieve your desired shirt color. The Colorize function replaces the original colors entirely rather than simply shifting them, making it ideal for dramatic color changes. For a natural-looking result, try these starting values:

   Hue:	36
   Saturation:	35
   Lightness:	–25

5. Save and close the file. Your shirt colorization is now complete, and because you used adjustment layers, you can return to modify the color at any time without degrading the original image quality.