Hair isolation

[petersweden]

Hi

I have tried to isolate the hair in this photo, but I cannot get a good result. Any ideas? I have tried the CS5 refine edge feature and also creating a mask based on the channel with most contrast.

Thanks!

[Repairman]

1. Ignore the outer frizzy hairs. 2. Mask the stronger hairs which define that particular persons normal style. By hand with a fine brush where necessary. 3. If you are adding a new colour background make a mask of one strand of hair and cut and paste it with different sizes and distortions around the main hair. Change the focus as well to give a sense of depth. It's tedious work but it gives a better result. If you have to change the colour of the hair - bad luck! The burned out detail would become detailed strands if the hair was darker. Loads of hand work.
R.

[Wolfman]

I used Topaz Remask 3 and it worked pretty well on the 1st try without too much effort.

[Tony W]

I agree with Repairman just ignore the frizzy outer hair and concentrate on the finer details of the body of hair. You could also try adding fake hair back using brush work (there are some hair brushes around) or even use the smudge tool to disguise.

If you really must keep the flyaway hair then if you do not have software to do this I think the best way is starting with a channel mask.

I really hate trying to mask hair but I thought I would give it a try on this one. Far from perfect but I think I am getting close to acceptable.
Forgot to document what I did but loosely as follows:
1. Temp curve layer concentrating on seperating the white hair from the grey background. Just increase the density of the background while keeping an eye on retaining most of the hair (tweak the white point as well as black)

2. Select the best channel for seperation and copy

3. Several Apply Image commands multiply, color dodge/burn to aid in seperation.

4. Then some brush work to get areas pure white and a soft edge brush around the head hair outline in places.

5. Finally get rid of the temp curves and add background after applying mask.

[petersweden]

Thanks for the advice it was very useful

[Repairman]

Good one Tony. I like the way you proved the point using an unforgiving background.
Another tip Peter; depending on style and lighting etc you can flip some of the detail work and use it on the other side of the head.

[Tony W]

Thank you R. Background choice arbitrary just liked the colour. I still think the hair does nothing for this image and should be removed as for me it adds nothing to the image

[Daviskw]

With a gray background it is easy to put any background you like.

In my example I first darkened a duplicate to get the gray close to 128.

I then inserted a new background above it with the layer mode set to overlay.

I then added a mask to the duplicate and masked in the original color very loosely.

This technique will show every hair.

Butch

[Daviskw]

sorry double post somehow

[Tony W]

Nice job Butch!

[Daviskw]

Thanks Tony

[petersweden]

Originally Posted by Daviskw

With a gray background it is easy to put any background you like.

In my example I first darkened a duplicate to get the gray close to 128.

I then inserted a new background above it with the layer mode set to overlay.

I then added a mask to the duplicate and masked in the original color very loosely.

This technique will show every hair.

Butch

Wow, great result! I guess focusing on getting even lighting on the background around the hair is important if I want to use this technique.