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You know there are probably some fantastic images in your picture collection that are just dying to get out, they just need a little recognition and some help. Here we have the age old digital question of how do we make a complex cutout? In fact we can make any cutout we like, the question should be how much time do we want to spend doing it. Many of us will choose quality over time every day of the week, but there are limits. Here we start with the image below. The composition, human interest the fence are all great parts of our picture, but fate, as usual, has decided that we were not to get the dramatic background we needed.

There is still too much detail in our image to make an effective cutout in the usual ways, but perhaps this is a job for Photoshop's channels. Channels are our chosen ways to make a complex selection and we do that by turning our image into an Alpha Channel and then turning that into a selection. In this video we take you through how easy it is and nowhere near as lengthy as you would expect.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to create what we have below, then the rest is easy. By the way, we felt a flip of the image helped our composition too.

As we said, after this the rest is a doddle and the trick is knowing when to stop. The original people picture was taken at Byron Bay lighthouse in Australia.

Here we have whisked these people about 1700k north to the Cairns area

Here they are back at Byron Bay, hope they don't suffer jet lag

Here they could be anywhere in the world

but here they are on the Dingle Peninsula in Southern Ireland

Now they find themselves in Chania in Crete

and finally I had better bring them back to Byron Bay

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