extracting blond Hair for black background-destination

[pure]

Originally Posted by studioj

Mine was the most simple of all of you. I used the old REPLACE COLOR option in the menu IMAGE/ADJUST/REPLACE COLOR

I used 20% tolerance and click on the upper background color, and I decrease the luminosity only in 15%.

I did this like 6 times and then, I had a very nice contrast in the background and the hair. Then, use color burn tool (O) on the edge of the hair and a hard black brush on the rest of the background.

REPLACE COLOR worked perfectly, more than LAB color and the other methods

sorry doesnt understand that really. i tried it and it works fast, in the preview i get a nice mask from the hair. but then i press ok, and nothing happens.
what is the goal from this, do i get a mask in channels for example?

another question i dont understand:

when i use the magic wand tool, or lets say better i use the channelmixer to get a mask from body and hair, and i have it finished, the edges of the mask are very hard and ripped. do you use a soft selection then always after that or blurring?

compared to the slower method of creating a path with the pathtool and beziertool, with a finishing selection of 1 or 2 pixels, the result is very sharp and doesnt look so broken as the other methods.



thanks

[pure]

Originally Posted by studioj

Ok non of the 2 ways that Russell Brown shows in his videos are usefull for this, well, not as a "GOOD RESULT"

I'm a little stuck, but after the meal I was wondering about something, I'll give a try.

Do you know pure that you put all of us to work?

LOL

Ok, Now I edited my post to attach my try, please tell me if you think it's some how reallistic and I'll tell you my process

Check most on the upper side of the pic, I wasn't putting attention to the lower part, but the method works for bought

again me,:

how did you get it so soft and sharp? i like this result best, the picture is not quoted, hm.
using russel browns method i always tend to get a mask which looks ripped and broken. especially the thin hairs look very broken.

and something i am not sure about: the pictures will be printed 1:1, like 2meter high outside for an advertising campaign
which kind of black as background would you define? i took 100Black and 50Cyan then filled the background with it, altough i am working in ECI-RGB. would you fill it with 255/255/255 rather?

[lkroll]

About a minute and a half to be exact. I used GIMP's Color to Alpha and picked the background color. I then blended the base layers middle hair area back into the frey (most time consuming part; still not that hard) and done. Here's the transparent PNG file (note: IE does not support full PNG transparent specifications). Note too that this only worked because your background was pretty much a solid and consistent color.

[studioj]

Pure, I didn't use any mask to get the background dark, I used the item menu showed in the attached 1.

For english it is REPLACE COLOR, for German, no idea.

Flora, You and Me should make a Items and Terms translation to help everyone else here

Open the dialog window (attachment 2) and CLICK ON THE UPPER COLOR in the background to get the color sample. Set tolerance at a low value. Set Luminosity to a minus value. Then you can see results like the attachment 3.

The change it's very little, but do the same for 4 or 5 times, and you will get a nice gray background and bright white hair

[pure]

ok. i know. replace color. i am in there now. but it doenst work very good, i get very harsh and broken looking outlines of the hair.

i dont know how you all do your fine outlines with nice fading gradient to the black

[KR1156]

lkroll....picture looks awesome....do you think you could explain your method in a little more detail....i'm not sure what GIMP's color to channel is and the second part that you say was blending the base layer back into the fray kinda lost me.

are you using ps?

I would appreciate any feedback

Thanks.

[pure]

yes true.

i dont have gimp here.

my photographer is not satisfies with my result, any idea how i could get sharp and clear extract of the single thicker hairs?

i only have photoshop CS 2 on a mac, nothing else, sorry.

i used some of your methods and tried channelmixer, replace color and so on,
but i only got masks with ripped looking loutlines. then smoothing it afterwards with gauss or blur tool it looks not real.

so the methods are good only the outline is my problem. do i make a mistake anyway?

the thin hair i can paint always.

in the end i have to make dozens of bezier-curves, hm

thanks

[Flora]

lkroll,

.... looks great! ... I'd be very curious to see how it would look on a solid black background as pure had asked ...

studioj

I'm working on your 'Replace Color' Technique which, for this case, seems to get the best results ... Thanks for sharing ... and I'll let you know ...

[lkroll]

Like I said, this one was quick. Used very rough selection to get the base back, so for colors below midgrey, you'll see the imperfections, but busy backgrounds (non-solid) works. Anyway, GIMP has a plugin called color to alpha. I select the background color and then chose Filters>Colors>Color to Alpha. The background will become transparent (and so will some of the base colors on her head since the background is so close to her hair color). I then select (and I did this with a rough brush) the center area of her hair and copy that and delete the base layer. I paste the result and merge all layers (merge preserves tranparancies). The PNG file is the result. Again, simple simple simple. If I was a little more careful, even black wouldn't look that bad.

I still believe you can do the same in CS/CS2. I would be surprised if not. You should be able to create a color mask, but I'm not that proficient in CS2 yet.

[Flora]

Hi lkroll,

yes, it can be done with PS as well, in 2 very simple steps and it didn't take more than 5 minutes ....

* Select>Color Range, [Selection button checked], with the 'Add to sample' Color picker I clicked on different parts of the hair, adjusted 'Fuzziness' until I was satisfied with the mask, OK, Ctrl+Shift+I Inverted the mask so I was working on the background and not on the selected hair ...

* After this, you can use Levels, Curves, Color Balance, Selective Colors, Photo Filter ... to change the colour of your background and give a very light cast to to the lightest highlights ... If you'd like stronger colours you could tone down the very light grey of the background first (very easily and quickly done with Levels withouth affecting the highlights...) ... or you could change the blending of your colour Layer to Multiply ....

It's really very easy when you keep the background on the light side .... and even easier if you change to a 'busy background' .... The problem is changing white to black ... and the fact that

even black wouldn't look that bad

... but it will never look real good ...

In my attachment:

Left image was done with Levels.
Middle Image was done with Selective Colors.
Right Image was done with Color Balance.

[lkroll]

A side effect of the Colors to Alpha filter. Duplicate and then run colors to Alpha on top layer. Then duplicate the top layer several times until the background is black. Then copy the original layer on top and set to Saturation and adjust opacity down to a little. Do some additional black painting and your done. Really not a masking technique, but black, as you already eluded to, is a special case. Now call me the master of Chiaroscuro.

[lkroll]

I make mistakes too (but most of the time I'm perfect ). I thought that the forground color was picked when using this filter. The default color for Color to Alpha is FFFFFFh (white) and must be manually changed. So I did all the above using the white to alpha. Sorry for the mistake. The results speak for themselves anyway.

[Flora]

Hi lkroll,

sorry for getting back so late, but I've been very busy (and I'll be for the next two weeks ...)

Now call me the master of Chiaroscuro.

... couldn't agree more ... !!!!

(but most of the time I'm perfect ).

.... You can't imagine how familiar this sounds ..... been living most of my life with someone just like that .... (...that's what he says... )