Photo Retouching - - I hate hair

tigerphoto · #1 05-31-2006, 12:08 AM

I've been trying to edit this pic of this model for a design that I'm doing but I am having problem getting the back ground specs out of her hair. Can I get some help.

bart_hickman · #2 05-31-2006, 02:23 AM

Try the Russel Brown Advanced Masking tutorial here:

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html
(scroll to the bottom).

I duplicated the original twice and blended with hard light to enhance the contrast between her hair and the background. Then made a copy of the green channel (which had the best contrast) and then further enhanced this contrast with a curve adjust tool. Did some touchup with a dodge brush to get rid of specs due to jpeg artifacts (you shouldn't need to do this). This created a mask for the hair.

I just drew a magnetic path around the rest of the body to extract that. The first attachment shows the composite mask from these two operations.

Then applied that to the image to remove the old background.

Bart

Gina_D · #3 05-31-2006, 04:02 AM

Thanks for posting that reference to Russel Brown's tutorial on advanced masking, Bart. I went through it and have to say, that really changed how I'm going to look at masking! Not too sure about his "amaaaazing, but true!" approach, but it made me grin and shake my head a few times and I think I can handle it in small doses.

Thanks again,
Gina

Angel_Ice · #4 05-31-2006, 04:28 AM

Great tips Bart!
Can u explain in the previous post how you remove the shadows please? the step with the curves layer is not very cleat 2 me. I obtain in ceratin areas a so bruned color. Sorry for this OT.

Gary Richardson · #5 05-31-2006, 09:12 AM

You've got pretty good foreground/background contrast here, so I just used the extract tool, then cleaned up a bit by hand (not much to do on this one).

Put a plain grey layer below, and it's easy to see what needs doing. Use history brush and eraser to clean up, not the built in tools in the extract tool.

tigerphoto · #6 06-01-2006, 01:03 AM

I cant believe that you were able to come out with such a clean render!

I love it thanks guys. I saw that same tutorial and I was trying it out with another pic and I couldn't get it for the world. So I gave up and went to sleep. I'll try to give it another stab later. Thanks again

Dm_Cher · #7 06-01-2006, 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigerphoto

I've been trying to edit this pic of this model for a design that I'm doing but I am having problem getting the back ground specs out of her hair. Can I get some help.

Try to use our product - Background remover

Download Demo version

oceanjake · #8 06-02-2006, 01:19 PM

you need to color correct that background to white and hold the darks of the hair where they are. it's a simple curves layer to do....and just brush that into the hair area only. all those masking tools are CHEESY and most are nothing more than an adaptation of the "color range" included in photoshop.

Dm_Cher · #9 06-05-2006, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oceanjake

you need to color correct that background to white and hold the darks of the hair where they are. it's a simple curves layer to do....and just brush that into the hair area only. all those masking tools are CHEESY and most are nothing more than an adaptation of the "color range" included in photoshop.

Of course, you must unmix colors in order to correct place an image to diffrent background.
You must "substract" background color from image where transparency less than 1. If you don do it, your image on different background will look awfull.
This operation is called mate/demate.
Many intellectual erasers (like Background Eraser in PaintShopPro) can be it automatically. For some versions you must set fringe zone and run special procedure. Programm estimates bacground colors and substract it from cuttet image (unmix procedure).

philbach · #10 06-05-2006, 05:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dm_Cher

Of course, you must unmix colors in order to correct place an image to diffrent background.
You must "substract" background color from image where transparency less than 1. If you don do it, your image on different background will look awfull.
This operation is called mate/demate.
Many intellectual erasers (like Background Eraser in PaintShopPro) can be it automatically. For some versions you must set fringe zone and run special procedure. Programm estimates bacground colors and substract it from cuttet image (unmix procedure).

This probably should have been mentioned in Dm_Cher's Post