Masking in Photo

[Clayton King]

Admittedly I'm a Photoshop convert, but I'm having a devil of a time masking a headshot in Photo. No matter what I do, I end up with a white outline around the subject. I expected hair to be a challenge - it always is, but for my life I cannot get rid of this white "glow" around my subject.

Any thoughts?

lanny.afphoto

[user_0815]

Swapping a white background to a dark one is a challenge due to light spill or reflections on the edges. However, using the "Refine" feature usually brings good results. 

This is how I do it:

– Select the subject (or background and then invert selection) 
– Click "Refine" in the context bar and brush over the edges to refine. 
– Select "New mask with layer" since that gives better results in some cases (colour decontamination).

Remaining white edges I usually cut off by shrinking the selection by 0.5 or 1 px and add that to the mask.

With cmd+click on mac you get the content of that layer as a selection (e.g. the mask). I don't know the shortcut for win.

[carl123]

10 hours ago, Clayton King said:

Any thoughts?

It's a very easy cut-out to do using the selection brush and then the refine dialog

But if you set the output to Mask you get the white outline you describe

But if you set the output to New Layer with Mask or just New Layer then there is no white outline

(It's possibly a bug with the Mask output option but I would need a lot more time, that I don't currently have, to confirm that)

 

[Callum]

Hi All,

I have logged the difference in result with output as Mask vs New Layer with mask as a bug and will update this thread once I have more info.

Thanks
C