I was just wondering how you all replace a background especially in a picture where a person has strands of hair that need to remain. I have tried using fluid mask before, but I saw a post by Chris Tarantino saying that he would never use it in a production environment. Does anyone know why that is? What is the best approach for punching holes in pictures? Someone said something about "refine edge" but I dont' know how to use that and what it does? Anyone? :) thanks!

Entering "hair strands" after Clicking the search (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/search.php) button above showed these results:

Extracting hair - Please help!
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/image-help/20399-extracting-hair-please-help.html

Help with Hair removal
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-retouching/19485-help-hair-removal.html

Help removing complex hair from crazy background
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/image-help/15736-help-removing-complex-hair-crazy-background.html

Thanks OlBaldy. Those were helpful links. It still doesn't answer my question why Chris said he wouldn't use fluid mask. I've used fluid mask a few times and had great results(for how little I've used it) I'm trying to figure out if it's worth $200 or not though. :) Since I saw the pro's saying that they wouldn't use it, it made me think that there must be a faster way to do what fluid mask does, because the results I got were the best I've ever done. Any thoughts?

Try Googling " Masking With Channels? and you will find some useful tutorials.

Refine Edge in PSCS3 helps make your final selection more refined as in the name of the tool.

Obviously, I can't speak for Chris, but I'd have to agree with him. Fluidmask works great to a certain extent, just as most "all in one step" filters do. however, where it fails, just as other such filters, is in it's relatively limited control. There are other methods (such as the method Russel Brown outlines on his website) that simply provide extremely flexible control over every aspect of your image.

Simply put, filters like Fluidmask rely on the computer to decide what is what in an image. If the image is extremely high-contrast, or if the job isn't that quality-crucial, then yes, it will be fine. But if you're doing a job for a commercial production, you can't count on the computer to do a good enough job. You have to use your own eyes and make the selections yourself, even if it takes a loooong time. Like most things in Photoshop, you can do it the easy way, or the right way. It'll take a while, but the results are worth it.

Just my 2 cents.

The simple answer to why he wouldn't use fluid mask in a production environment is... actions and most plugins use tools readily available in Photoshop... If you know the tools and are proficient in using them then it is probably faster, easier and more accurate to do it yourself than have an add-on try to guess what you want to do..

And I think Chris is pretty proficient with the tools in Photoshop.

In a production environment half way measures do not get you very far.. why take the time to make a sloppy selection so the program can make a little better selection so you can further refine the selection.. When knowing and using the right tools you could have done it a lot more accurately and right the first time with the first selection.. Just my opinion..

A case where Practice cubed has its merits!

There's lots of ways to do it, most are covered in the links above. I personally channel mask, but that can become real tough when you have a tonne of variations in background density ect... for instance if you shoot a girl with her hair blowing in the wind in front of a tree with lots of branches, Channel masking is a little bit tougher.

But for me, it comes down to thinking. You have to shoot in accord to the chosen background for close cropping because a lot of the time, even with an amazing close cropping job, the person won't necessairly fit into the new background. But if you're going to be close cropping, try to shoot with a single solid color background and then light in accordance to where they're going to be... And then channel mask....

http://www.youthedesigner.com/2008/03/10/adobe-photoshop-cs3-tutorials-extract-complex-shapes/

this might help .... !!