Used where it would be difficult to select subject, such as hair, complex rigging and trees. This works better with a high contrast image.

1. Go to Select menu and choose ‘Colour Range’.

This opens dialogue box with the standard eyedropper selected. Click with the eyedropper anywhere in the image window to sample a colour to mask with. Concentrate on the difficult area, such as the fine hair and make sure this area is well defined. If the background is uniform, such as with a plain blue sky, then it would be better to click on the blue, but then the ‘Invert’ box has to be ticked. You can click inside the image to add more colours to the selection and also use the minus eyedropper to subtract from a selection.

The Fuzziness slider increases or decreases the number of pixels that are selected.

At the bottom of the dialogue box – select the Grayscale Selection preview so that you can view the edited mask selection in the full size image window.

2. Having completed the selection click on Add Layer Mask button in the layers panel to convert the active selection to a layer mask.

3. To fine tune the mask edges go to Select menu and choose ‘Refine Edge/Refine Mask’. Adjust the sliders until you achieve the best possible edges, once again concentrate on the difficult area. It is then easy to tidy up your mask using the brush tool and clicking on black and white to perfect your mask.

4. Open the image that you want as the new background and have both images showing on your screen.

5. Click and drag the layer with the layer mask on to the new background image.

If you want the mask selection to be shown in the full size image window then Alt and Click on the layer mask box of the layer.