I need some help masking a difficult area in PS and don't really know how to approach it.
I have an image with fly away hair, in which I would like to isolate hair and delete the background so as to put the image on a different BG.
greg

Greg,

Check the tutorials - there's one on basic layer masking. And, you might also look at the entries for retoucing challenge #8, which was to mask a girl with fly away hair...

Hi Greg,

I gave your photo a try. I extracted him from the background using Color Range.

1. I duplicated the background and changed it to a layer

2. In Color Range I used the color picker to select the background color and slid the slider to about 86 fuzziness.

3. Press OK, then inverted, feathered by 1 and pressed Control +J to copy this selection to a new layer.

4. I then selected the background layer and erased around his head and shoulders. Then I merged the two layers.

5. I fine-tuned it some, by erasing around his head a little more with the eraser set at a low opacity. If you erase too much hair, you can bring it back with the History Brush.

This is a very clear and sharp photo. What camera did you use?

Sharon:)

Extraction with new background attached.

Thanks Jac, I'll try it later, tired and Hot now, 89 today.
Sharon: Thanks, but it still has a background.
I need to learn this throughly myself. I did one once in PSP but had help from one of their top people and can't repeat it.
I think PS is better for this. I tried the quick mask this morning but didn't succeed.
I want to isolate 90% of the hair in photos like this, not an easy task. Hey, lets have a challenge!

greg

Have you tried the EXTRACT command in PhotoShop? With some patience it does a decent job with fly-away hair.

Extracting Hair Tutorial (http://www.creativepro.com/img/story/ExtractHair.pdf)

Advanced Masking by Katrin Eismann (http://www.photoshopdiva.com/articles/Masking.pdf)

Quick Mask Tutorial (http://freegraphics.subportal.com/ebiz/build/software/pshop/masking/10031.htm)

-T

First, I want to thank Vikki for her tut on quick masks, I learned it.
Thank you T Paul, I did the extraction and it sorta worked pretty well. This is what I did with it. It wansn't going as well as I wanted so I did it three times and put all the images together. judge for yourself.
greg

Masking hair like this is really work. I have yet to find a satisfactory technique that didn't require a good amount of detailed masking. I think you did a excellent job on this.

Glad you found my tutorial helpful.
Vikki

Wow, looks good to me. Great job! Masking fine hair is quite the challenge in patience! If you want to look into software, Procreate's KnockOut2 is suppose to be the ultimate for masking fine details such as hair and smoke. I've never used it but I've seen advertisements for it. Pretty pricey though (~$329).

KnockOut2 (http://www.procreate.com/product/knockout/)

-T

I have to say Sharon, and I don't know what methods u used to achieve your mask but I cant fault it:) There seems to be no visable bleed and no haloing - very nice

Personally In a case like this I would probably combine a number of selection techniques to produce a final mask, however if sharon would care to expand on her techniques.....

As for Knockout I own both versions and in my opinion, neither really live upto to the performance of photoshop - perhaps their only real gain as I see it is that they are adept at transparent images and really complicated images.

you talkin to me, or Sharon. If me thanks, I have struggled with flyaway hair for almost a yr. I have a image of a lovely young actress (Joanna Going) and I did a colorization on it. I spent so much time on the hair, it almost killed me. I couldn't get past the difficulties of PSP 7. I even had help from one of their top people, and still couldn't really do it my self. But this Photoshop thing really works. I spent about 30-40 minutes on it, and it was my first. More and more, I'm being won over by PS.


I'm posting the old PSP pic just for fun, it's a unfinished vs., but it shows the hair type if nothing else.