Introduction to Compositing: Creating Your First Composite Portrait

Refine That Edge

You’re at a point where your selection is looking pretty cool. You might even be tempted to stop here, resize Karyna, and be done with it. But I’m going to ask you to keep going for a little while longer. The Quick Selection tool does a good job of creating a basic selection, but where it falls apart is along the edges.

At this point, you have an image that looks something like this (A). At first glance, it looks pretty good. But if we zoom in here, we can see where the hair’s edge is hard and looks chopped off (B). That’s what the Refine Edge dialog box is for—it lets us control the transition between what’s masked and what isn’t so that we have a seamless flow from the subject to the background. To bring up the dialog, go ...