Continuing with KR's list..

Lets hear advice, experience, tips and tricks on cloning flyaways,
cross hairs and nasty hairlines, adding new hairs to the edges of bad
or sharp masks, building body or volume etc, and masking techniques
for hair.

I'm keen to see what people might be doing i haven't thought of. :)

Looking forward to seeing some info here, I have just started editing a job that includes some technical hair masking. I decided at the time of shooting, still life I'm talking here, to shoot 2 exposures, one optimally lit, the other with just the background lit, creating a dark mask as an image.

I'm hoping this technique will work well, but will see over the next few days and maybe post a few pics.

.

This thread could be very interesting to learn some tips and tricks about masking. But I think that, to point it the right way, we should explain the techniques basing on a specific image because there are so many ways to tackle the masking and it depends not only on the image but how to approach different pieces of the same image, even using different technique for each piece. Also it is very important where you are going to apply the mask to be applied properly.

I often use the clone tool on darken or lighten for flyaways and crosshairs

Honestly, I use to spend lots of time working on hair masks, and other crazy things.. then I found a product called Mask Pro from OnOne software.

Absolutely genius and completely, 100%, worth the money. I've mask hair, trees, and taken the background out of shots through a transparent wedding gown.. in a matter of seconds.

There is another product called Liquid Mask but I forget who makes it.. also an impressive masking software but in my opinion not as easy/quick to use.

Both of these are capable of incredible things, like accurately taking out fireworks from an image to put on another, keeping all the color and transparency.

Sounds like an ad I know, but the stuff really just is that good that I haven't bothered with complex masking since.


Kyle

I've yet to see an external software or plug in really make much difference.

As far as masking goes, there's no magic bullet. As stated, it's always image dependent. Channel masks, chopping, apply image, calculations, Power of ten or whatever it's called. Choking the masks, utilization of blending modes, combining elements from the main image and secondary sources. More important than masking, when it comes to hair, is integration of elements into the new background. No matter how perfect your mask, there will always be the need for integration. Practice makes perfect and speeds things along. When it comes to creating or adding to hairstyles, ie. building volume or adding ends, it's all about compositing. The warp tool is your friend. Flyaways are best masked out - get everything and mask out what you don't want. Knowing what to remove in the simplification process is key. Like anything when it comes to retouching, objectivity is paramount. Real always looks better than created, no matter how good the creation.

I too utilize the lighten and darken modes when cloning or 'pushing back' cross hairs and the like.

81.5874% of the commercial work that I do is hair oriented.

Yep hair has to be retouched to fit in with its background. Its color carefully modified, and its tone made to fit- its almost true to say that it should be seen as transparent, because its like a mirror to its surroundings. And its very true that real always looks better than painted, however good people think they are. Brushing is Ok in masking and comping. Blending can be used to burn or dodge the edge strands into their new setting

Ant Whats "power of ten" ?

Mark: http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=291

I've never gone through all the words, but I understand the concept and put it to use.

Flyaways are best masked out - get everything and mask out what you don't want.

Didn't really follow this part..?
Is this assuming the background is replaced?

Also, what's your favorite method for choking masks?
I was hoping you'd contribute in this thread. Thanks.

ah so 10 refers to all the converted channels. you mean using the A B channels to find color in masking? I convert to 16 bit before doing this, but yes its useful. Choking Captain Hook - I use Maximum and Minimum. You can set shortcuts to bring these dialogs up.

for tightening a mask very subtle, you can also use a curve on the mask, and just adjust the contrast, it will tighten or loosen the mask very quickly.

sometimes i get away with "fadeing" the minimum/maximum move. helps with subtlety as well. but can leave halo.

I can't really add anything to what Ant said. Very well put, but I can't emphasize that the mask needs to be made for the specific background. A nice saved channel mask is not going to work for all backgrounds no matter how you try to choke it or spread it. It rarely works for the one you made it for. Unfortunately a good mask is usually "destroyed" when the background is blended in to the foreground.

I always start out with Calculations and apply image. I also use Hue/Sat, or gradient maps, or H/S. It is never quick and easy but always rewarding in the end.

Chris

Chris, there was talk of you elaborating on using gradient maps for masks in the other
thread. Do you have time to do that? Past anything obvious, i'm curious to see
how you may use them creatively that gives an advantage to other channel operations.

Anyone care to expand on methods for integration?

for tightening a mask very subtle, you can also use a curve on the mask, and just adjust the contrast, it will tighten or loosen the mask very quickly.

sometimes i get away with "fadeing" the minimum/maximum move. helps with subtlety as well. but can leave halo.

This is how I do it. I've never utilized the min or max filter.

Cap

I am working on it. Just a lot to do before I can sit down and get that done.

But it is coming.

Chris

Ant, why did you have to bring crazy ass Dan Margulis into a hair masking conversation.
I love the man, we're practically neighbors but come on.
When will they put Minimum and Maximum in one dialog box cause I still can't figure out which to choose. Anybody with me, lol.
Martin Evening shows good techniques that have worked for me at times. Honestly there is no formula. Once had to mask out a tiger head that was shot on non photo blue. The spill was just overwhelming, I can't put in words what tools, blending modes, channels and adjustment layers where used but nobody ever questioned the integrity of that head. It's on the website. My motto is "whatever it takes". As an artist, the focus should always be knowing your tool. I know many different ways to do one individual thing and I will pick one according to my mood of the day and my level of boredom. It's like picking your clothes in the morning!!! Btw I've thrown many cats out of my studio asking me if there was a 2 filter method to do skin.
Rembrandt is King

Chris, there was talk of you elaborating on using gradient maps for masks in the other
thread. Do you have time to do that? Past anything obvious, i'm curious to see
how you may use them creatively that gives an advantage to other channel operations.

Anyone care to expand on methods for integration?

I’m also looking forward to Chris's tutorial on using gradient maps for masks.

For me, it's perfect to expand the thread to integration methods, like we all said before the masking depends a lot of the integration process to apply it properly.


This is how I do it. I've never utilized the min or max filter.

Ant, Can you explain why max and min is not good for you to mask? I do use curves or levels to make or adjust the masks but some time max and min work nice for me to do adjustments.

....
When will they put Minimum and Maximum in one dialog box cause I still can't figure out which to choose. Anybody with me, lol.
....
Rembrandt is King

You are right Richard, it will be great, Max & min in one dialog box. Until then I’ll still thinking of max & min as follows:
Max = expands the mask = whites grow
Min = contracts the mask = blacks grow.
lol..

Rembrandt is not the only king, there are many others… Velazquez, Goya, Dali, Picasso…lol.

There can only be one king of Spain Rhas, no more civil wars please.

Ant, Can you explain why max and min is not good for you to mask? I do use curves or levels to make or adjust the masks but some time max and min work nice for me to do adjustments.

I've just only used them once or twice. I just don't, it's not that they are bad or good, I've no experience. Maybe next time I'm bored.

Rich, I've never read a Margulis, Eisman or what-have-you book, so it really doesn't matter. Reading be bad. Most of them, in my limited experience have the aesthetics of a Sears portrait studio; that's why they write books and have oddball opinions that rarely translate to the real world.

I can't wait until we go back to that androgynous look and everyone has a shaved head.

Yeah Eisman (.....fill in expletive), but remember not everyone has had the entry ways that we had.
Sears is the real world not Harpers Bazaar. Terry Richardson being the exception.
Margulis is special however. Can aesthetic be taught? I'm not sure but technique certainly can.

I can't wait until we go back to that androgynous look

Kids on myspace and in bands are already there and have been for
a couple of years. Who can tell the difference between a guy and
a girl on there anymore?

and here i'm thinking of shaving my head, i think you guys may have talked me out of it..at least until i get my tattoo...

Ummm... Have you guys taken a look at my pic recently?

I very rarely use the tools minimize and maximize. They are good tools to use and there is a great use for them with masking.
I much rather use a simple blur and tighten it with curves or levels.

Chris

I've yet to see an external software or plug in really make much difference.


Give the one I mentioned a shot, free demo. I've pulled fireworks out of the sky, and changed a background behind a transparent wedding gown.. it's quite effective. Perfect? not every time in every situation, but it's a whole lot faster than most methods in many cases. If nothing else, it gets you real close real fast.

With hair, like you said.. knowing what to do with it once you've got it mask out is really more important. A perfect mask doesn't necessarily equal a perfect image.

I use to do all sorts of insane channel masking (still do) and such, calculations, etc. but I can avoid a lot of that now. I learned a lot from Margulis so I tend to take a really seemingly odd approach to a lot of things but I mostly use those techniques for color corrections now.

Kyle

Ha...who needs hair. I've been shaving my head for more than 8 years now. It started back in college when I was on the burger king diet and couldn't afford the barber shop and hair products. (Yes, I was that starving artist/student poor.) Now it's become my regular routine.

Anyway, I do want to see Adobe put min and max in one dialog box. It'll be even better if they put in a preview window and a fade slider. They're good for tightening masks for products or body parts, but not so good on hair. I find that even at the smallest radius of 1 pixel is still too much. 100% of the time I have to fade it and add blur.

PZ, Make sure you enjoy that moment if this is going to be your first time doing it, 'cause it won't feel the same again second time around. I can still remember that my head was so clear and I felt like that I had a third eye...or maybe I was on something back then...haha.

There can only be one king of Spain Rhas, no more civil wars please.

Lol You are right, we have enough with the king we already have. Let’s call them just genius. lol


Getting back to masking…


...

I very rarely use the tools minimize and maximize. They are good tools to use and there is a great use for them with masking.
I much rather use a simple blur and tighten it with curves or levels.

Chris

Chris, I do use max & min a lot. I’ll try to explain how. Since max & min expand white or black pixels without affecting the amount of grey pixels in between. I use Max & Min to take the black or white where I want them to be. This only works when you have enough space to expand or contact the mask, other ways I use gauss blur + levels or curves to give the amount of blur(Opacity) I want on the edges. It is just the way I'm used to work.

I did a mini tutorial so people can see what I’m talking about and how it works.



Ha...who needs hair. I've been shaving my head for more than 8 years now. It started back in college when I was on the burger king diet and couldn't afford the barber shop and hair products. (Yes, I was that starving artist/student poor.) Now it's become my regular routine.

Anyway, I do want to see Adobe put min and max in one dialog box. It'll be even better if they put in a preview window and a fade slider. They're good for tightening masks for products or body parts, but not so good on hair. I find that even at the smallest radius of 1 pixel is still too much. 100% of the time I have to fade it and add blur.

...

Ha…I still have a lot of hair, I’m a tough pic to mask …haha

I agree with you, it is true that max & min don’t work good on masks with tine hairs, I think it is because Max & min just make them thicker or thinner. In those cases I use levels or curves.

Yes max and min are useful for just that.. contracting and expanding a mask crudely - they do create blocking artifacts, and generally this is not useful for hair or anything where subtlty is required. I mentioned them only because the word choking usually means that to me.

Generally a point that Ive been repeating for years is that its wrong to assume you can always mask hair, and that its just a question of accuracy, mainly because its outer edges are so fine that they are transparent and reflect the background. Every book you will read will not mention this.

Rhasval

Sure there are times to use them. I agree. But if there are corners or curves there will be distortions on the mask, as well as the blocking that Mark mentions.
Plus I have found that one would still need to blur the mask for hair to enable proper blending of the background it is going on.
But I have yet to find an instance where it has been accurate enough. But that could just be the type of work I am doing.

Chris

Ok, Mark and Chris, I’ll watch out for those distortions and blocking. Thanks for the information.

One thing I found it useful is for light effect around or inside the edges of an objects, persons, …etc, where you don’t need a big accurate. But it’s true that all this can be done just with curves and levels.

A technical point, max and min on a mask do exactly the same and reference the same math, as the expand and contract selection commands. All the other commands in the select menu have their filter equivalents too. This is useful to know not for high end work, but mainly for visualisation where use of Quick mask and applying keyboard shortcuts to these filters can make speedy and crude type of selections and masking much easier.

There are some people using masking plug-ins on Dpreview and they do excellent quick work. They are very capable in standard masking but think the plug-ins allow them to do better and faster extracting.

As for min and max filters the limiting factor is the minimum radius of 1 pixel... so only rough adjustments can be made.

Butch

There are some people using masking plug-ins on Dpreview and they do excellent quick work. They are very capable in standard masking but think the plug-ins allow them to do better and faster extracting.

Butch

DPreview, a bastion of mediocrity and hardcore amateurs.. Prosumer files displayed as jpgs with no commercial basis.

Theres not a masking plug in that can do a better job than the tools already in there

Exactlyyyyyyyyyyy

DPreview, a bastion of mediocrity and hardcore amateurs.. Prosumer files displayed as jpgs with no commercial basis.


As in this forum there is a broad spectrum of abilities on dpreview. I am not saying it is a better forum only that some very talented people are using the plug-ins mentioned. There is no reason plug-ins can't be used to make professional extractions. There is nothing that says you can't combine both plug-ins and standard tools supplied.

I find very talented people on both forums and I see no evidence that retouchpro is any better or worse...I certainly would not say all the work presented on dpview is less professional then work presented here.

Butch

As in this forum there is a broad spectrum of abilities on dpreview. I am not saying it is a better forum only that some very talented people are using the plug-ins mentioned. There is no reason plug-ins can't be used to make professional extractions. There is nothing that says you can't combine both plug-ins and standard tools supplied.

I find very talented people on both forums and I see no evidence that retouchpro is any better or worse...I certainly would not say all the work presented on dpview is less professional then work presented here.

Butch

Certainly this place is 99.9% wanna be. Not trying to make a comparison between here and there. Only saying that on dp, their market and demographic is almost exclusively upper tech nerd - accountant, not pro.

Better than saying someone gets good results with plug-ins and suggesting the use of them both, is trying them yourself and realizing they are a waste of time.

Ant... so you have tried them and found them to be a waste of time? Perhaps they would not be a waste of time for us 99.9%...or they may be beyond your skills or patience to use properly.

Most of the very tools and procedures you suggested to make an extraction were at one time not part of Photoshop and developed as add-ons and plug-ins.

I'll bet that some procedures and innovations in these plug-ins will find there way in future additions of Photoshop. This is how the program develops.

Just because a procedure works in the present or past does not mean it can't be made better and faster another way in the future.

If we stifle experimentation then we loose innovation…I don’t think you would want to make a living using Photoshop 2.5. Having an open mind to new ways can only make your work even better.

Butch

There are absolutely no "procedures and innovations" in these plug-ins. When you get round to understanding whats going on under the bonnet in photoshop you realise all they really do is use the existing capabilities, and give it a crap interface. This interface often takes longer to use than the built in stuff. Even learning something basic like Color Range PROPERLY, along with simple masking techniques, will wipe out 50% of them

Why is there so much hate here? Relax.

Assuming your way is the only and best way, is silly. Assuming that if someone does it any other way, they are automatically a "wanna be" is both ridiculous and insulting.

If you don't want to use a plug-in, by all means stick with your methods because they work for you. If somebody wants to take an alternate method that they get satisfactory results with, why shouldn't they?

Photoshop is an extremely powerful tool, but it is not the be all end all of tools, it's a strong base. Do you still use photoshop to enlarge an image? Do you use only photoshop to reduce noise in an image? It could be argued that doing either of these exclusively within photoshop is actually the 'wrong way' these days as there is software (*gasp* plug-ins) that do it far more effectively.. both faster and better in some cases.

Anyway, relax people, we do this because we enjoy it right? Even those of us who do it for a living, I hope are still in it because it's something we enjoy. You shouldn't argue about something like that :)

Kyle

I have a few hair brushes that I use for masking quite a lot.

I have tried the plug-ins, but didn't find any speed advantage in professional work.
But I understand that for blue screen and green screen work the plug-ins like zmatte work quite well.

I have been searching for a long time and there is really no Best way..
Depends on what you like to do.
In anycase I sat next to a really really good photoshopper in my country and he does not even worry about the fly aways as he makes hair after the fact and blends it into the natural hair using the Smudge tool!
Not sure quite how he does it but it comes out really good.
He kind of purposely cuts a lot of the hair off and then remakes it himself with the smudge tool
Hope that may help some..
Snook

I have been searching for a long time and there is really no Best way..
Depends on what you like to do.
In anycase I sat next to a really really good photoshopper in my country and he does not even worry about the fly aways as he makes hair after the fact and blends it into the natural hair using the Smudge tool!
Not sure quite how he does it but it comes out really good.
He kind of purposely cuts a lot of the hair off and then remakes it himself with the smudge tool
Hope that may help some..
Snook

One way of using the smudge tool and hair:
http://www.innographx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=910


Bart

I have a single brush that I use that I redraw or create from scratch any hair that I need to work on. A separate brush for eyelashes.

Chris

Hi Chris

Are these custom brushes that you have made or downloaded?

Butch

Ones that I have made. They really aren't that special though. Once you get the taper and the "noise or banding" factor of hair right its really just a matter of how you draw it.
It is time consuming to do it right. You need to do many layers and vary the color and thickness of the strokes. But ultimately I think it looks pretty close to real that it is fairly difficult to tell the difference.

Chris

I also illustrate hair. tweaks to the other dynamics, shape dynamics, noise, color dynamics, many layers, and slight blurs of drawn hairs to match the real hairs.

I will also high pass real hair, warp it to the same direction i want my drawn hairs to go, overlay mode and clip it to the drawn hairs. This way they have real hair texture, highlight, etc.

"high pass real hair, warp it to the same direction i want my drawn hairs to go, overlay mode and clip it to the drawn hairs. This way they have real hair texture, highlight, etc." - good tip that one Ant, thanks - adds a little realism I guess. You can also noise and texture in a similar way, and paint subtle highs and lows into your painted hair.