Photo Retouching - - Background Selection

cygnus · #1 11-10-2006, 06:37 PM

Hi

I am stuck with this image. I need to select the foreground to be able to put the girl against a different BG. The hair cluster is an issue. I have successfully done similar job with channels in the past but this is not working.

Any suggestions ?

Daviskw · #2 11-10-2006, 11:01 PM

Hi there

This is a tough one... I really don't think it can be done without fudging with smudge. Other than that you will need to pick a background and work hair by hair on the mask to show.... then color blend to match.

I hope someone has better ideas than me. I did not spend a lot of time but I roughed it out then used a smudge brush to fill in. Could do better with care and time i think... but still not the best.

Butch

jubbaking · #3 11-10-2006, 11:57 PM

I am absolutely terrible at selecting hair but need to get learning quick! I found a great tutorial that I plan on utilizing in the future and I think you might be interested in it. Go to RussellBrown.com and watch the tutorial called "Advanced Masking." Here's the link:

http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov

Swampy · #4 11-11-2006, 11:38 AM

Here's a quick job using MaskPro.

Cassidy · #5 11-11-2006, 11:42 AM

Marvellous job there swampy

mistermonday · #6 11-11-2006, 05:52 PM

Cygnus, Here are a couple of other options to consider for this separation which is pretty challenging. I took the image from RGB mode to LAB (LAB does a nice job of confining the yellows predominantly in the upper half of the B channel curve) and duplicated the background to a new layer. On that duplicate layer I selected the B channel (Ctrl 3) and using Image>Apply Image, applied the B channel to itself with the blend mode set to Linear Light.
This resulted in attachement 1 below which increased the separation / contrast between the hair and the background. From here you could add a solid color layer below and use the Blend If sliders in the Layer Styles or the Extract Filter. To get attachemnt 2, I used the Extract filter to see how it would work. I spent no more than 3 mins making a course trace - around with a fat brush with Smart Highlight turned off (fast and sloppy - normally I use the opposite). With the additional color separation, the extract filter in sloppy mode did a pretty good job. I expect if you took your time to do a careful job the results would be signicantly better.
Regards, Murray