How to extract this from background

[htown]

I think I may have really screwed up when I took this shot. I knew it was not the best background, but I was in a pinch and the client really had nowhere else in the house for me to shoot at that would give me enough room so this is what I picked. Now they are asking me to remove the background and put in something else but blond hair against white rocks is not that easy to extract, at least for me. I am really looking for someone to tell me HOW to do it, not just show that they can do it.

Here is the image


Many thanks,
Houston

[RicGN]

Yup, it's gonna be tedious, but you can do it. Quickly? No.

The explanation takes a lot of time, and the best place I know of that has it is in a book by Deke McClelland, "Photoshop CS4 Channels & Masks", from page 365 to page 389, in only 27 steps. It deals with hair on a bad background and shows how to do it with Add and Subtract blending modes, Apply Image, Calculations, and even a little hand painting.

I just read it, and it's tricky, but it gets you there.

Lesson 12, which I haven't read, is called, "Masking the Tough Stuff" and covers other techniques, such as using High Pass. The thing is, you'll have to use multiple techniques to get each part of the image masked.

I've been around a while, and still find the book useful.

Hope this helps.

Ric

[htown]

I have seen some of his Multiple and Calculations videos on Lynda.com and they are quite in depth. Guess I can review those as well. I got my self into quite pickle. Never again, i can tell you that.

Thanks for the help and the very specific reference.

[Flashtones]

What size/resolution do you need to deliver and against what color background will she be placed? You might not be as bad off as you think.

The one thing you have going for you is that her hair is fairly neat, and the present background is close enough in color that you don't get major color fringing.

I'm no hair expert but I think what I've done could pass at low resolutions. And there are far better retouchers here than me who I'm sure can give better advice.

First put whatever you want as her new background beneat her layer. I started with Color Range and used the drop down menu to select Yellows. Her hair is just sufficiently more saturated to provide some separation from the BG. With the color range selection active I added a layer mask to the image. Then I Option+clicked the mask to see it and ran levels on it twice. First time I pushed the white point inward to drive her hair to white (talking about the mask). Second pass I pushed the midpoint slider outward to the right to drive the wall to near black.

At that point you have the beginnings of a mask to manipulate and refine. Use your white and black brush to deal with large areas. Do the same with the brush set to overlay mode for transitions between hair and background, and perhaps a touch of small radius (~1px) gaussian blur to smooth transitions. Lastly, touch up edges with a small soft brush at low opacity, and also a textured brush to wisp up edges that are too smooth. Somewhere or other Russel Brown has a video about making hair brushes that might be useful here.

Like I say, others will do better, but this didn't take all that long.

(I didn't bother with her from the chin down, just seeing what I could do with the hair.)

[htown]

Flashtones,

Thanks for covering the processes. I am working on it today and I will see how far i get on it.

[htown]

Flashstone,

When I try to use the "Color range" tool and select yellow from the drop down menu, I get the "No pixes greater than 50% were selected" warnning. I still can create a mask but when I run a levels adjustment on it I am not seeing the control over the contrast between her hair and background like you seem to be getting. What I am I doing wrong?

[Southbay]

Try the demo. This could be a useful tool for you.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=4

[htown]

Southbay,

Not haveing any luck with OnOne as I can not even get the demo to show up in CS4 and can not see the plugins in CS3 are all grayed out. THey seem to be having some issues with this as per their Forum. Dont have time for that crap right now.

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by htown

Southbay,

Not haveing any luck with OnOne as I can not even get the demo to show up in CS4 and can not see the plugins in CS3 are all grayed out. THey seem to be having some issues with this as per their Forum. Dont have time for that crap right now.

I'm on a Mac with CS3 and the demo runs fine for me. There's a bit of a learning curve and if you're pressed for time, you may want to try more familiar techniques.

[htown]

Those familiar techniques were not working for me, that is why I am here asking.

[HappyCoOl]

Hello everybody,
To extract your subject from the background is very simple, just use the quick selection brush and paint your background slowly, when you select the subject press on alt (option on Mac) kay on the keyboard and paint back on the selected part of the subject, when you finshing selecting the background press on ctrl+shift (apple key on Mac+shift) + I to inverse your selection and press on refine edge button or go to select menu/ refine edge and increase the a little bit the father value and voila. You got your subject.

[HappyCoOl]

Hi again,
I've opened your file in ps and I've done all the things I told you about plus a little bit of effort just kidding! Here I've uploaded your file it's in PSD format just delete the stupid gradian layer I made in the background and rfine a litle bit some hair and there you have it

http://www.4shared.com/file/13106304...b/Shannon.html

[mistermonday]

Houston, I used the calculations command to make a pretty good starter mask.
Source 1 was the Blue channel, source 2 was the Green Channel inverted. The blend mode was Subtract with the Offset = 110. I used the magnetic lasso tool and the regular lasso tool to select most of the lady leaving a narrow border around the top of the hair and filled it with white. Then used a soft brush set to overlay to paint around the outside hair line to darken the background and lighten the hair.
Regards, Murray

[W.Smith]

Originally Posted by htown

I think I may have really screwed up when I took this shot. I knew it was not the best background, but I was in a pinch and the client really had nowhere else in the house for me to shoot at that would give me enough room so this is what I picked. Now they are asking me to remove the background and put in something else but blond hair against white rocks is not that easy to extract, at least for me. I am really looking for someone to tell me HOW to do it, not just show that they can do it.

Here is the image

Here's an off the wall idea (thinking out loud):
of course you want to select the background in order to be able to replace it with something else. Doing that selecting the standard way – with e.g. the magic wand – is an extremely tedious and very much time consuming job. So, it would be much more convenient if you could just select everything that is out of focus (out of DoF), right?

So it would be ideal if Adobe could add focus selection capability to CS. Wonder if there could be some kind of cooperation with Helicon Focus.

What do you guys think?

[Cupcake]

I used the background eraser.
Add a sky background, smudge tool to soften some parts.

I did nothing else to the lady.

[htown]

mistermonday,

I really appreciate that information. Your work is just perfect. I did not have the same luck for some reason I am not getting the background to go black without making the hair go black too and visa versa using the brush on overlay. I even played with the opacity and it was just not working for me. Th eclient has decided she likes the one with the black background anyways so look slike I got out out of that one.

Thanks to all who contributed. Truly a great Forum. I look forward to giving back.

[mistermonday]

Houston, thanks. I am glad that things worked out with the client. Despite many years of photographing people I still find situations where I forced to shoot against backgrounds which are far from desireable. In those circumstances I try to set the subject aginst the part of the background that offers the best contrast for easier subsequent extraction in PS - even though that area may look like the least appealing.
Regards, Murray