# Complex Selections Made Easy in Adobe Photoshop - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/complex-selections-made-easy-in-adobe-photoshop-a-graphic-design-for-lunch-tm-class/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Graphic Design · Quick win · Rated 7 /10 # Complex Selections Made Easy in Adobe Photoshop - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class Updated September 2026 Helen Bradley · Graphic Design for Lunch™ Fortgeschrittenes Niveau · 33 min Two real hair cutouts in 33 minutes give Photoshop CS5+ users a fast, hands-on comparison of Refine Edge and Select and Mask. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fcomplex-selections-made-easy-in-adobe-photoshop-a-graphic-design-for-lunch-tm-class%2F1338677427) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. This class narrows its scope to one specific, genuinely hard problem: cutting a person out of a background without butchering their hair. Over seven short lessons it works through two portrait images sourced from Unsplash, both chosen deliberately for their contrast and background separation, and uses each one to demonstrate a different Photoshop tool for the same job. The first cutout runs through the Refine Edge tool, including the practical detail that Adobe buried it in later versions of Photoshop. Getting to it requires holding Shift while clicking Select and Mask, a workaround presented early enough to be useful rather than as an afterthought. From there the lesson walks through the tool's view modes: marching ants, overlay, on black, on white, on layers. Testing a selection against a black background versus a white one is a small but telling piece of practical judgment, since a selection that looks clean on white can fall apart entirely on black, and the class treats that as a reason to make pragmatic choices about what backgrounds are worth pursuing at all. The second cutout switches to Select and Mask, the newer interface, and repeats the same workflow with different quirks. Its most useful observation is also its most honest: the Refine Radius brush, while good at recovering fine hair detail, tends to eat into the middle of a mask that was already correct, and the fix is to switch to a plain white-painting brush and manually restore the parts it destroyed. That is the kind of tool-specific frustration a manual would not mention but a working designer needs to know before hitting it themselves. Beyond the two headline tools, the course adds two smaller techniques that raise the finished result above a rough cutout. Decontaminate Colors targets the color spill that a background throws onto hair edges, and the class shows how to judge it against the actual destination background rather than accepting the effect blindly. Later, a stamped and flattened layer gets a pass of Add Noise to match a grainy subject against a smoother background, a compositing detail easy to skip and immediately visible when skipped. Where the course falls short is depth per topic. Thirty-three minutes covers two images and two tools, which means each slider and mode gets a quick pass rather than a full workout, and viewers get little guidance on subjects with less favorable lighting or backgrounds than the two examples chosen. The class also assumes a working knowledge of layers, masks, and basic selection tools going in, so anyone still shaky on those fundamentals will need a different starting point first. As a project, the class asks students to cut out a fluffy-haired subject and place it on a new background, which mirrors exactly what the lessons demonstrate rather than stretching into new territory. For its intended audience, an intermediate Photoshop user staring down a difficult hair selection, the course delivers two clear demonstrations, a handful of specific fixes for common failure points, and enough tool comparison to decide which approach to reach for next time. The standout The pairing of Decontaminate Colors with a Burn Tool mask touch-up gives a concrete, repeatable fix for the halo fringing that ruins most hair cutouts. ## What you will learn - · How to open and use the Refine Edge tool, including the shift-click workaround needed to access it in Photoshop CC 2015.5 and CC 2017 - · How to use Select and Mask's onion skin view and its refine radius, smart radius, contrast, and shift edge controls - · How to paint with the Refine Radius tool over uneven hair edges without dragging it across simple, straight edges - · How Decontaminate Colors removes background color bleeding into hair strands, and which output option to choose once it is enabled - · How to touch up a layer mask with the Burn Tool to reduce haloing around hair edges - · How to match grain between a sharp subject and a smoother background by stamping a merged layer and adding noise Best for: Intermediate to advanced Photoshop users on CS5 or later who already know basic selections and need to composite portrait subjects with fine hair onto new backgrounds. Skip it if: Beginners unfamiliar with layers and masks, anyone still on Photoshop CS4 or earlier, and anyone needing selection techniques for subjects other than hair. Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples Actionable Steps Organization of Lessons [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fcomplex-selections-made-easy-in-adobe-photoshop-a-graphic-design-for-lunch-tm-class%2F1338677427)