Trouble with hair selection

[freeze1824]

Below you can find a picture of a model in in a darker background..
Iam having trouble in removing the background without damaging the hairs..
Can anyone help me please..

http://i37.tinypic.com/33xzriw.jpg

[0lBaldy]

Quicktime movie may be a long download.. be patient..
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov

[freeze1824]

Thankyou..
But this image is with a bit of a similar background.. I already tried with that advance masking tutorial.. But not working.. Is there any other way to do out with this image?

http://i37.tinypic.com/33xzriw.jpg

[DJSoulglo]

Dark hair on a dark background = NIGHTMARE.

The dark hair on the light parts = easy (check the channels)

Basically do the easy bits first, by looking at your Red channel, increasing contrast in it and that's half your mask (I suggest inverting it).

Then for the hair on the dark part of the bg, grab a brush and get painting!

Good luck.

[freeze1824]

Thanks.. Let me try out..

[Vernon]

To lesser degree, after following 0lBaldy's suggested video and DJSoulglo's input, perhaps cloning hairs of similar curvature to compensate those strands that are not maskable may also help...

[freeze1824]

Thank you Vernon.. Normally i do these kind of cloning and painting works on most of these kind of images.. I just taught of getting an idea of of extracting it from the background without using these touch ups.. I appreciate all of you for taking taking time to reply me even though this is a bit of hard task.. lets find any one could bring out further ideas...

[EditB]

Any chance you can create a 'clean' background image and then difference matte the two images? This'll mainly be possible if it was shot on sticks and you have access to the frames shot either side of this one. It won't be perfect but it may help...

B

[MrRyan]

One thing that may seem kind of stupid, but always helps me, is to figure out FIRST exactly how much of the hair I need. Typically with shots i work on, we want some flowy hair, but we definately don't want all of it. It helps to make a duplicate layer, place a white layer below that, and just mask out parts of the hair until you get the shape/effect you want. It takes about 3 minutes. THEN, most of the time, i've cut my work by at least 25%.
It won't help you with the actual masking, but it can help you with the amount you have to do. I also agree with getting rid of the hard parts much as possible, and brushing hair back in.

Good luck freeze, you've got a busy couple of hours ahead of you,
RyRy

[freeze1824]

Thanks ryan..............

[ray12]

As a photographer I am able to get almost perfect single strand, single pixel, resolution of hair edges with Fluid Mask ($179) BUT....I have to shoot the model with the purpose of precise extraction in mind first.

Using Fluid Mask to extract...it needs...a mid tone, evenly lit, gray background...not chroma blue of green because the extreme color saturation of those two colors contaminates the hair from behind. The light gray shade works beautifully. Keep the evenly lit gray background about -1 to +1 F stop within the key light exposure so the light does not blow by the hair and loose edge detail. Do NOT use a hairlight so that hair is both lighter and darker than the background in the same area...add highlights in later. Keep the model 6 feet in front of the background so no shadows fall in the hair area. Put no complex background in the hair area...or he software will have almost a hard a time as seeing individual strands as our own eyes do.

With the above... I am able to get almost perfect hair fine extractions...but violate any step above...and you will be pulling your own hair out!!

The above image has too many areas where there is too little definition to give a great cutout with Fluid Mask.

Ray12



Just FYI.