[t0m]

Help!

Ive been having difficulty extracting the white fur from the blue background. I tried every technique i know but i cant still remove the blue cast from the fur.

thanks

[Gary Richardson]

Hi tOm,

Your pictures are a little small, Flora has written some instructions on posting Images to the forums Here which may be of help.

[t0m]

ok thanks Gary.

[bev from oz]

Hi tom i can see your problem have u tried cutting in with an erazer or just a brush with white thats the only advice im able to suggest.

cheers Bev

[Smokie]

Hello Tom,

if you are using Photoshop CS v whatever you have the extract filter this is a great Filter, i have found if you play around with your settings you will get the result you are looking for...

[t0m]

Help!

Thank you for the assisting me how i could post my images correctly.

Ive been having difficulty extracting the white fur from the blue background. I tried every technique i know but i cant still remove the blue cast from the fur.

I always find myself not satisfied on how I extract this image.

thanks

[Doug Nelson]

On something like this you can cheat and use lighten blending mode instead of extracting it. Just make sure the new background is darker than the fur. You might need to make two layers, one at normal blending mode that stops short of the fur edge, and one of only the fur edge in lighten mode.

[Jerryb]

hi,
First i am novice.. smile....
doug meathod i think is probably better... but what I did was after eliminating the blue background then I used the dodge tool and set for shadows and a small value for exposure. and then just brush over the edge a few times and that eliminated a lot of that heavy blue cast on the edge of the hair witout effecting too much the rest of the hair...

Originally Posted by t0m

Help!

Thank you for the assisting me how i could post my images correctly.

Ive been having difficulty extracting the white fur from the blue background. I tried every technique i know but i cant still remove the blue cast from the fur.

I always find myself not satisfied on how I extract this image.

thanks

[Photomaster]

Try this:

1. With Lasso Tool, roughly select the area that has the blue cast you want to remove.
2. Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and desaturate blue and cayn.
3. Create a Selective Color adjustment layer (choose Reselect from the Select Menu after you create the layer.)
4. In the Colors box at the top of the pop-up, select Neutrals. Play with the Black slider at the bottom until you are satisfied with the shade of gray in the fur.

[Gary Richardson]

I used extract tool to separate figure from BG.

Then created new colour layer and "painted" tips of fur white.

Lastly used dodge tool set to 5% and shadows and lightened the shadows on the tips of the fur.

Note: I used white BG as that was the colour you'd chosen.

Making such a drastic change of BG colour will emphasise any minor defects, if I were wanting to change BG I would not use one with such a marked difference.

A graduated BG would probably give better more natural results.

[bart_hickman]

The background eraser can make quick work of this one. I just experimented a little with the tolerance setting and found 70% is perfect. Set the sampling for the background swatch and discontiguous erasing. The sample the blue background color and set the background swatch color to that same color. Then brush away. Maybe do a little clean up with the regular eraser. Takes a couple minutes. I was a bit sloppy here, but you get the idea.

The blue fringe is distilled out and replaced with transparency so you can drop it down on any new BG color the new colors will mix in roughly the same as the original ones did.

I attached a couple of versions (white, orange, rainbow).

Bart

[Britsdad]

tOm.....welcome to RetouchPRO.
Here's just a quick try at your pic useing free GML Matting pluggin found here... http://research.graphicon.ru/image-p...matting-6.html .....it seems to do a good job even in the two minutes I tried, you should be able to get it better with care.....
John

[arphot]

I have read that using channels to isolate things like hair and fur is a viable option. Here is an article: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...rbps_2fwks.htm
As well:
http://www.planetphotoshop.com/selec...-channels.html

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by arphot

I have read that using channels to isolate things like hair and fur is a viable option. Here is an article: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...rbps_2fwks.htm
As well:
http://www.planetphotoshop.com/selec...-channels.html

Image-based masking (which is the generic name I use for that type of extraction) is an excellent first step, but it doesn't address the issue of background colors mixing with subject colors in the boundary areas, or when the subject is partly transparent. Ideally there are two more steps required
1. remove the old color (blue in the O.P.'s example)
2. make sure the new background color mixes in where the old background used to mix in.

Tools like the background eraser and the photoshop extract filter address all three steps in one shot assuming they work well (they don't always work well.) Image-based masking is my backup plan when the BGE doesn't work on a fuzzy-edged subject.

Bart

[omytfineo1]

I have the Katrin Eisman book on Masking and Compositing which is great for things like this. I believe this is an excellent candidate for isolating the fur from the background (since the two are rich in contrast from one another) by duplicating the green channel, and using levels or curves to build a mask. You would then take your selection from the mask you created and delete the unwanted pixels. I believe with some little tweaking, you will get what you want...