Photoshop Tutorials: Create A Portrait Studio Background

Step 13: Save The Photoshop Document

We've completed our work on the background, so let's save our Photoshop document so we can use it whenever we need it instead of recreating it each time. To do that, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S (Win) / Command+S (Mac). Normally this is the keyboard shortcut for the "Save" option, but if this is the first time you're saving the document, Photoshop will bring up the Save As dialog box instead, since it needs to know where to save it, what to call it and what format to save it in. Make sure you save the document as a Photoshop .PSD file. Name the document something that makes sense to you ("Studio-Background.PSD" works nicely) and then save it to your computer's hard drive in a location where you can easily access it again.

Step 14: Drag The Person From Their Original Photo Into The Background Document

At this point, all we need is someone to place in front of our newly created background, so open the photo that contains the person and use the selection tool of your choice (Lasso Tool, Pen Tool, Extract filter, etc.) to select them. Here I've used the Extract filter (which we'll cover in another tutorial) to remove the woman from her background in the original photo. I've also cropped away part of the bottom of the image since I won't be needing it:

Then, with her selected, all I need to do is press the letter V on my keyboard to quickly select the Move Tool and drag her into the Background document. Make sure you have the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer selected first in the Background document so that the person appears on a new layer above it, otherwise the adjustment layer will lighten and/or colorize not only the background but the person as well:

Still with the Move Tool selected, drag the person into position in front of the background:

If I want to add a little color to the background at this point, all I need to is double-click on the Hue/Saturation layer's thumbnail in the Layers palette and when the dialog box appears, I'll select the Colorize option in the bottom right corner, then drag the Hue slider to about 27, which gives me a nice warm color that works well with her skin tone. I'll also lower the Saturation to about 15 so the color is more subtle:

And here we have the final result:

And there we have it! We've now created a simple portrait studio-style background in Photoshop that we've saved and can re-use, as well as lighten and/or colorize, whenever we need it!

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