Lifestyle Shot: Selecting the Shirt

Free Photoshop Tutorial

Explore this comprehensive Photoshop tutorial that delves into techniques such as reusing selections, creating channels, and colorizing using Hue/Saturation, focusing on selection and colorization of a shirt in an image.

This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past Photoshop training materials and is compatible with Photoshop updates through 2020. To learn current skills in Photoshop, check out our Photoshop Bootcamp and graphic design classes in NYC and live online.

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

lifestyle selecting shirt channels

Exercise Overview

In this exercise, we’ll be selecting the shirt. It shares a lot of edges with the skin, so we can reuse the work we did on the skin selection to make the shirt selection easier and faster.

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Roughing Out the Selection

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

  2. Because the skin selection shares a lot of its edges with the shirt, we can use it to create our shirt selection. As shown below, Lasso lasso tool a quick selection around the shirt (don’t worry about slightly sloppy edges).

    lifestyle select shirt

  3. To subtract the skin channel, go to Select > Load Selection.

  4. Set the following:

    Channel: skin
    Operation: Subtract from Selection
  5. Click OK.

    NOTE: You can also do this with a keystroke. If you hold Cmd–Option (Mac) or Ctrl–Alt (Windows) and click on a channel, Photoshop will subtract that channel from the current selection.

Refining the Selection

  1. To save this as a channel so we can refine it, go to the Channels panel and click the Save selection as channel button layer mask button.

  2. Name the new channel shirt.

  3. Get rid of the current selection by pressing Cmd–D (Mac) or Ctrl–D (Windows).

  4. Select the shirt channel and show eye hide show icon the composite RGB.

  5. Paint away the unwanted parts where too much was selected.

    Remember that painting with white removes, and painting with black adds.

Colorizing the Shirt

  1. Hide eye hide show icon the shirt channel.

  2. Hold Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) and click the shirt channel to load it as a selection.

  3. In the Layers panel, add a new Adjustment layer adjustment layer button, choosing Hue/Saturation.

  4. In the Properties panel, check Colorize and play around with the sliders until you get a color you like. If you need a place to start from, try these settings:

    Hue: 36
    Saturation: 35
    Lightness: –25
  5. Save and close the file.

photo of Dan Rodney

Dan Rodney

Dan Rodney has been a designer and web developer for over 20 years. He creates coursework for Noble Desktop and teaches classes. In his spare time Dan also writes scripts for InDesign (Make Book JacketProper Fraction Pro, and more). Dan teaches just about anything web, video, or print related: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Figma, Adobe XD, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more.

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