Forget Photoshop - Quickly Remove Any Background Using PicMonkey | Aisha Borel | Skillshare
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Forget Photoshop - Quickly Remove Any Background Using PicMonkey

teacher avatar Aisha Borel, Instructional Designer | Mind Map Lover

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      PicMonkey How to Remove a Background (Part 1)

      9:28

    • 2.

      PicMonkey How to Remove a Background (Part 2)

      5:54

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About This Class

You don't need expensive photo-editing software like Adobe Photoshop to make your images look professional.

In this quick educational course, I teach you how to remove backgrounds from your images using PicMonkey.

Meet Your Teacher

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Aisha Borel

Instructional Designer | Mind Map Lover

Teacher

Hi! My name is Aisha (pronounced EYE-sha).

On top of being a Mom to two super amazing tiny human beings (Jaida 9, John Arthur 3) I'm a graphic designer and instructional designer.

I went to school for graphic design and have been designing and creating all kinds of whatnots for well over 20 years. I love graphic design, but more importantly, I really LOVE that I get the weekly opportunity to bring my passion for design to the work I do AND earn a good living that helps support my family in the process.

It's fun and for that I am thankful.

Speaking of gratitude and things I love, about 12 years ago I was introduced into the world of mind mapping through a teacher at the time who I still to this day admire.

What I learned in her classes ex... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. PicMonkey How to Remove a Background (Part 1): Okay, I'm already logged in to pick Monkey. And so the first thing will want to do is we'll go. Want to just roll over the design tap and click custom size? We're gonna make this the Facebook ad size, which is the 1200 pixels by 628 pixels. It's already I'm pixels, so we'll just click, make it. Okay, So the next thing that will want to do once we do get the size right is will want to click on transparent canvas right now. The canvas background, it is white, and we're wanting it to be completely transparent to where we don't have a background all. So let's click this button and we know that is transparent. Now, when we have this gray and white checkered background, the next step will be going to click on this little butterfly. The butterfly just means overlays, and we can see that to the right where it says overlay. So we'll just go ahead and click on that and this opens up all kinds of different, like overlay effects and so forth. We're not interested in any of those right now. What we are interested is adding our own, so we'll click as your own. My image is on my computer, so I'll go ahead and get it there. And this is the image that I want to use. So one of the things I want you to notice is this right here is that I've got the overlay box and I've got basic I've got any razor and this right here is the tool that we will be using to get rid of the background of this image. But the thing is, is that this background as much as I like Like my smile and the way my eyes were looking very bright and happy. The background just isn't working for me. It's in my studio, so I want to get rid of it. So first thing that I want to do is I'll go back to basic and now go ahead and adjust crop of this so I'll just make it a little bit bigger. Actually, we'll just go ahead and do this. I wanted Teoh mostly fit. All right, that's good. Now we'll go ahead and go to the Eraser tab and the eraser tab as two different things as size and hardness. What size will do is it will go ahead and make it to wear like this right here. You get to see how large the brush is. So this is, you know, Goto delete quite a large area of my background all at once. That's really nice when your wind, you know, delete areas that are very, very large. But it's not so great when you really want to dig into smaller areas. One of things I like about pic monkey is that it allows you to see, you know, as your sliding back and forth the size of the area that you will be deleting. Now the other thing is hardness. So right now, going all the way up to 100 makes the stroke really, um, hard and crunchy. And we'll just go ahead and zoom into this image by clicking the plus sign. Okay, so here's a good way to show you. This right here creates a really hard edge when it's all the way at 100. Now, if we pop it down to completely zero catch, you can see how much softer and delicate the race line is. That's really nice for when you have Thoenes soft edges that you want to get rid of the background, but you don't want it to be, you know, abrupt and crunchy and highly pixilated. Also, there's these two different options. There's E erase beds from the overlay and pink paint back bits that your race. So that's really nice because it allows you to. You know, if you made a mistake, I think you can just go ahead and re add it. So that's a really nice tool right there. And you know, I'm painting over. This is well, and absolutely nothing is happening. So that's very, very nice. So we'll go ahead and go back to the delete option. I'll make my every sir just a little bit larger will make the hardness about a 29 and we'll just go in here and slowly start to just kind of whittle away. And like, I've got a stray hair right here. I'll just go ahead and start to delete that my heart is just a little bit more firm because the hair line is more rigid. Then this soft background of the sweater. So what will end up doing is zooming out again a bit more and just basically going in and starting to erase the background. This is something that will take absolutely will take time to go in and just make sure that your background looks great. It's nice and, you know, it's just basically looking really good. So let's delete this back. Okay? Now we've got the basic parts of the background. Delete it. So this is when we go in and we start refining it, start working with it, start really tightening things up. Um, I'd even like with these hearings, I'm just gonna move this off to the side. I'm gonna change my hardness all the way down to, like, Super Soft. Basically, at zero would have changed my eraser size down toe. Also, I can eight and start going in between these little bits and painting. And again if you accidentally make a mistake, One of things that you can do is you can go down here and click Undo the last action. You can also let's just do that again. You can also go back here and you can start to, you know, strategically you add back in areas that are supposed to be there. So it's kind of fun that you can go ahead and play with the brush size. You know, if you wanted to, you could just strategically delete and remove areas like I can remove this whole hearing and then just go in and start to paint back areas with a little bit of a smaller brush and more Hartness so I can just kind of follow around here and see. All right, this is the basic shape of the hearing and then go back and play with a little bit more and get that nice and tight and refined. So let's go ahead and keep removing this background. We're gonna get even smaller. Get in these little bits right here. These little areas where you know, it may not necessarily make a huge difference to go ahead and go in there and make it look nice. But in the overall big picture and ends up looking really great. So with that done, and we'll just kind of poppin these edges as well make sure that's looking good there. I mean, you can get really as detailed as you want. Um, it just depends on you know, your, uh how much time you have your expectation level and so forth. So let's go ahead and zoom out of this image. And then that way we can start to see the further back we go. That, wow, that's looking actually pretty good, you know? And, um, you know, photo editing and getting rid of backgrounds is an act of love, especially when you're using software such as pic monkey. I know. I certainly appreciate this camp. It does not offer this. It doesn't presently offer this option of being able to really go in and dive deep and photo at it. Your pictures toe where you remove backgrounds make them look good, so let's keep going. 2. PicMonkey How to Remove a Background (Part 2): and this is a nice little tool here in the corner. It allows you to be able to go in and start toe, you know, put it on certain little spots that you want to directly go in and start photo editing. So now, since I'm removing the background along the cheek, I want the hardness. Teoh could increase it just a little bit. Um, just to kind of see what that looks like, since Theo Edge is a bit not about basically just not as solved as the shirt assed faras The focal point. Ah, a lot of it comes down to experimenting and finding, you know what works for you figuring out okay, this is where I can kind of push it. This is where I can pull back a little bit. The's strains of hair, This is definitely definitely one of those areas. Were is, like, all right, It doesn't have to be so perfect just as lines it gets the idea of cross, you know, certainly want a bit of transparency to come through. However, the precision, you know, just kind of dropped down a little bit with it. Now, if you're wondering what tools I'm using Teoh be able to go in and edit this, Um, I'm using anywhere from ah, wack, um tablet Teoh. Just a basic mouse way. All right, Now let's zoom out a bit and see how everything looks all right. And what I'm doing right now is just taking my eyes and scanning all along through here. You know, I see some areas over here that I could certainly get rid of. Um, this right here. You know, it's kind of looking nice with those little strands, but then in here kind of drop some areas, so I think use a little bit improvement. Um, over here as well. - Okay , let's go ahead and click this, but quickly fit toe window. Now, I'm really happy with that. Um, I think it looks really good, and one things that I like is that these little bobs and bids. What they'll do is when I put a background behind this image of myself, then it'll just help. It looked that much more rich and riel. So that's how you delete a background from any image that you have