Help with Image background / Hair

[FCP]

Hi

I was hoping someone can help me with this problem. I've been retouching for a long time but it's always a problem when I have to maintain a background yet clean up hair.

In this case I need to maintain the integrity of the background but take out the distracting vertical red line which happens to be a light source of some sort.

The line runs behind my subject through his hair. Everything needs to look natural. I've had this problem in the past and it's always an issue but in this case it is real problematic. The problem is mostly the hair line but also keeping it consistent. The shallow dof and gradient make it difficult. No matter what technique I use it looks like garbage. There must be a better way and a better solution.

F

[Wolfman]

I gave it a try and did a quick brush set to color mode and sampled the pillar color and painted over the red areas.

[0lBaldy]

FCP, Welcome to RetouchPRO Hope you enjoy your stay here and make lots of friends. Poke around, have fun!

I did same as the Wolfman except added a masked copy of the blue channel in color mode just to make sure the red was eliminated.. then painted on a new color mode layer

[FCP]

Thank you for your replies,

I'm actually looking to remove that strip entirely. The biggest
problem is the hair line and getting the texture and gradient of the background to match the rest of the image.

I've used several methods and nothing works well enough.

[John Wheeler]

Hi FCP

I have been following this thread and both Wolfman and OlBaldy provided solutions to what I "thought" was your problem. I think we are also having a communication problem when you say

I'm actually looking to remove that strip entirely.

yet in your intial post you said

In this case I need to maintain the integrity of the background but take out the distracting vertical red line

The red is gone so from my reading I am not sure what you really need. Sometimes a picture says it all so can you post your best shot at what you want and I sure it will become a lot more clear and forum members will be able to better target suggestions. All IMHO of course.

[FCP]

Sorry if I've confused you. The area where the red strip is needs to match and properly blend in with the rest of the background in every way.

[Siciliana]

Now I am confused too. are you saying that you want to make the background on the right look like the background on the left and get rid of the pillar and red shadow area altogether? Are you simply trying to lighten the shaded area, or do you want to replace the background altogether?

[Wolfman]

At this point you might be better off putting a whole new background in that resembles the area you have now like this one.I did this quickly so some flaws and your sample lettering.

[Tony W]

I am still a little confused as well. Do you want to match the right side background to the left or or disguise the red/brown strip area?

As Wolfman suggested perhaps consider a completely new background (I cannot see anything of importance in existing!).

If you want to keep what appears to be a pillar on the right you could try as I have done and select pillar and on a new layer stretch the copy to cover the offending area then paint back the face and hair on a layer mask. The hairline etc does not look troublesome at least on this size image

[FCP]

Thank you again for all the replies...

For those of you that are confused. I'm really sorry.
1. The red strip needs to be removed
2. The area that was once the red strip needs to blend in with the rest of the background.
3. the edge of the subjects head (hair line, ear) needs to look right. Not fake or layered or in any way look like to image has been altered.

Wolfman-I like what you have done but the area of the subjects head is in question. Explaining how you did it would help a great deal.

Also, it is hard to work on any low res image sized for web. That said I can't understand how anyone is really seeing this well enough.

[philbach]

Well it turns out that the red is primarily a color problem and not a luminosity problem. The hair is similar in color to the background color. So add a new layer, use color as the blending mode and sample the good color from the background and paint the proper color back in.

[FCP]

Thank you everyone...

Im pretty sure I solved the problem...