Extremly difficult hair extraction

[mlerrigo]

Hi

I've tried everything to extract the hair from this image without success. channels, calculations, together with refine edge etc,etc... And would love to know if any of you could help.

I'm not asking you to do work for me just if you want to have a go at it then just share the procedures with me, and everybody else.

I can get so far but it's the finer hairs that are the problem and it looks bad without them..

Thanks in advance for all your help, attempts and advice...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlerrigo/6980402427/

[Pajero]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

Hi

tried to download the image from your link but all I got was

"The owner has disabled downloading of their photos"

I took a screenshot of it, so resolution and quality are not the best to work with.
You don't say what software you are using.

Anyway, here is what I managed to do using PS CS5.

1 Mask
2 B&A with different backgrounds.

For the masking I followed this Tutorial

Hope this helps!

[Phaeton]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

Hi
I was going to try but I'm not able to download the image. I think you've done all you could, given that the contrast is pretty poor between hair and background. You could try extracting it to a passable standard; then the finer hair will have to be painted in – strand by strand, I'm afraid. See attachment.
Eddie

[ashphotoart]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

Phaeton, post an tutorial how you setup your brush to paint the hairs. It would be fun for me and others.

[Phaeton]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

Hmm... it's not a tutorial per se, more a guide – a lot depends on the resolution of the image, the sharpness of the hair, the intent:
Roughly:
1. Create a blank layer
2. Brush set to hard (sometimes a softish brush) and small pixels (1–2px), opacity @ 100% but sometimes lees, depending on how much "fill in between" is needed and how wispy the hair needs to be
3. Alt click to sample hair colours (fairly constantly – you want the individual strands of hair to be slightly different in colour, rather than a uniform mass)
4. It helps to have a soft straight hand with the stylus, the strokes need to be fluid but firm – one stroke per strand. I've never been able to do this with a mouse; only my Wacom
5. Pay attention to the hair direction, some flyways are always necessary to mask away the "cut out" look.
6. To blend the painted ones, go over the original hair a bit.
7. Play with the layer's opacity
8. Work bit by bit, in many layers if necessary.
9. Some of these layers can be blurred slightly depending on image sharpness
10. Finally combine all the painted hair in one final layer and clip a noise layer to it to match the original's noise.

Some people use the smudge tool as well to great effect for this as well. This has never worked for me plus the smudge tool can be a tad slow so I prefer to paint. Whichever way, it's a pain sometimes...
Cheers
Eddie

[redcrown]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

That is a most difficult extraction given the low contrast and color difference between hair and background. One of the things I do in such situations is try to increase that difference using a temp copy of the image, build the mask on the temp copy, and copy it back to the original.

Use Levels, Curves, Selective color, HueSat, High Pass, etc., to push the image way beyond reason but give better definition between hair and background. Sometimes I use Topaz Detail, which works well to better define the light "frizzies".

On top of that, painting in new hair is often necessary. For those (like me) with no artistic talent (like Phaeton), there are a number of free hair brushes available. There is a good video tutorial somewhere on the Russel Brown site.

[mshi]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

or the quickest way for really tough ones can be this piece of software called Fluid Mask.

http://www.vertustech.com/fluidMask/overview.html

[kav]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

The tutorials on the web all suck. You extract as close as possible, make adjustment layers relative to your new background, sometimes bits of multiply blending. You can draw in new hair, extract detail from the old hair and clip that to the new hair. Add lighting to it. It can be somewhat time consuming overall to get it right, but there's no point in trying to get the settings on levels and calculations just right forever when it's just not going to present you with a fully acceptable result. This stuff takes refinement, and you need to be sure you're taking it in the right direction or you're just wasting your time.

On this one specifically I'd pen mask out the larger locks maintaining smooth curvature (and I'm very very good with the pen tool). Then I'd use adjustment layers and masks around the edge to blend for the new background or use multiply mode at partial opacity in that area. I'd draw in some frizz bit by bit. It requires some finesse. You need to match real stuff. You don't just pick a small brush. It can be a custom brush, and it should have some resemblance to the real width of the hair. It requires some basic drawing skill, and there might be other ways of doing it, but this is an appropriate method as it can produce results that are usable at high resolution. This kind of thing will actually produce results when the basic calculations methods and things fail.

That is a most difficult extraction given the low contrast and color difference between hair and background. One of the things I do in such situations is try to increase that difference using a temp copy of the image, build the mask on the temp copy, and copy it back to the original.

Use Levels, Curves, Selective color, HueSat, High Pass, etc., to push the image way beyond reason but give better definition between hair and background. Sometimes I use Topaz Detail, which works well to better define the light "frizzies".

On top of that, painting in new hair is often necessary. For those (like me) with no artistic talent (like Phaeton), there are a number of free hair brushes available. There is a good video tutorial somewhere on the Russel Brown site.

The flyaways will break no matter what, and most of that hair has the influence of other colors affects its color. With anything the OP wants to preserve, I'd pen mask it or do a somewhat light version of that high contrast extraction. I wouldn't go crazy trying to get it perfect because there's no way to do this where it'll work regardless of what you put it up against. Sometimes if you look close, there are gaps in the initial hair or parts where it practically fades into the background already. You won't extract that in a clean manner because it doesn't have a complete existence independent of its background. Taking away the background in itself then will make it look fake and cut out. When it's a plain background, sometimes you can take in just a pixel or two around it and use adjustment layers and stuff to blend the old thing into something like a sky. Using as much of the old detail as possible can be beneficial, but it won't provide everything.

You can paint in new hair, extract detail from other hair and clip that to the new painted hair. You just have to match everything including direction, color, highlight, appropriate length, and lighting influence from the new background.

or the quickest way for really tough ones can be this piece of software called Fluid Mask.

http://www.vertustech.com/fluidMask/overview.html

No it's not. Those programs are garbage, because they don't handle anything past what the basic PS tools could already handle.

[Pajero]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

The tutorials on the web all suck.

A bit hard, ain't it? I wander if you even bothered to watch the Dr. Russell Brown Tutorial I linked to my post.

The flyaways will break no matter what, and most of that hair has the influence of other colors affects its color.

I agree with the first part of your sentence; for what the color is concerned the Tutorial covers that aspect quite well.

I wouldn't go crazy trying to get it perfect because there's no way to do this where it'll work regardless of what you put it up against. Sometimes if you look close, there are gaps in the initial hair or parts where it practically fades into the background already. You won't extract that in a clean manner because it doesn't have a complete existence independent of its background.

I agree with this.

You can paint in new hair, extract detail from other hair and clip that to the new painted hair. You just have to match everything including direction, color, highlight, appropriate length, and lighting influence from the new background.

Personally I think Phaeton offered an excellent example of alternative if nothing else is satisfying without "going crazy trying to get it perfect"

No it's not. Those programs are garbage, because they don't handle anything past what the basic PS tools could already handle.

I have tried Fluid Mask in the past. I found it difficult and very time consuming, but since it might have been me, I'd never define it "garbage".
But hey, everybody is entitled to their own opinion and preferences or?

[ShadowLight]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

Hi

tried to download the image from your link but all I got was

"The owner has disabled downloading of their photos"

I took a screenshot of it, so resolution and quality are not the best to work with.
You don't say what software you are using.

Anyway, here is what I managed to do using PS CS5.

1 Mask
2 B&A with different backgrounds.

For the masking I followed this Tutorial

Hope this helps!

Not bad, but it looks like you've lost the illumination, to me.
Highlights are completely gone in the 3rd image (from the masked curls on the back) with the blue bg, where it should be even a brighter scene altogether.

maybe if you +add contrast and brighten up the masked area, will be better

[kav]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

A bit hard, ain't it? I wander if you even bothered to watch the Dr. Russell Brown Tutorial I linked to my post.

I've seen his material, although this might have been different material because it was quite a few years ago. I've seen the plugins. They just attempt to make photoshop's easy tools just a bit easier. You just have to look at things objectively. In many cases like this one if you kept all the pixels that looked like hair and got rid of everything else perfectly, it still would not look correct when dropped to a new background. That's why I'm saying it takes some real work and understanding. I was trying to save the OP or others reading the thread some frustration :P. Many people try to do it with the alpha channel masks and stuff, then it's not working so well and they think it's just that their settings aren't quite right when much of the time that's not it at all.

[mshi]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

here is a related thread on MM

http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=454013

and the OP of that thread wrote:

"Mary was kind enough to send me a PM outlining her impressions of the Vertis software. She was convincing enough to make me give it a try. While my pride won't allow me to extoll it's virtues too much, it is truly kick ass. Good bye work arounds, hello quick, simple, and beautiful."

[Pajero]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

Not bad, but it looks like you've lost the illumination, to me.
Highlights are completely gone in the 3rd image (from the masked curls on the back) with the blue bg, where it should be even a brighter scene altogether.

maybe if you +add contrast and brighten up the masked area, will be better

Thanks.
You are right about the illumination. I should have decreased the transparency in the mask of the curls on the back.

My attempt on the snapshot was a 'quickie' while hoping to be able to download the higher resolution image.

....In many cases like this one if you kept all the pixels that looked like hair and got rid of everything else perfectly, it still would not look correct when dropped to a new background. That's why I'm saying it takes some real work and understanding.

I couldn't agree more.

I was trying to save the OP or others reading the thread some frustration :P. Many people try to do it with the alpha channel masks and stuff, then it's not working so well and they think it's just that their settings aren't quite right when much of the time that's not it at all.

I know.
After hours and hours spent in frustration, I've came to the conclusion that the perfect solution would be "don't touch the background of flyaway hair" unless you are prepared to accept a compromise which, most of the time, is very far from a perfect result.

[0lBaldy]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

Want to easily paint in flyaway hair? Dr. Brown to the rescue... Super Advanced Masking Techniques for Really Bad Hair Days

Then go to his "Tips and Techniques" page... Scroll down to Adobe Photoshop CS4 Standard Edition Tutorials and continue on to "Super Advanced Masking Techniques for Really Bad Hair Days" to download the 'Brushes'

While there check out his many other GREAT TUTORIALS......

Practice Cubed!

[ray12]

Re: Extremly difficult hair extraction

I use Fluid Mask professionally...and I am able to extract hairs with single hair strand precision... without any halos or matting or fringing on them. But for even Fluid Mask to work well... it sometimes needs uncomplicated or relatively uniform backgrounds to get the kind of detail that is exceptional.

Fortunately...im also a professional Photographer... and ive learned early on to use a light gray background (or other uniform color background) to get perfect results from hair extraction efforts. Sometimes if you want perfect results...you have to shoot your own images and maximize the conditions that allow for perfect cutting to start with. If you have a complex background texture right next to single strands of hair...then no software...not even your own eye sometimes...can tell the differences between the background textures and the fine detail of the hair edges.

I must admit...that sometimes I have to cheat to get great results. Over the years I have been able to collect hundreds of great hair extractions made under near ideal conditions. You can then create your own hair fix library. What I do is create and then re-use these perfect hair snippets... and I make hair repair brushes out of them...so I can create a perfect edge fix. Whenever I get a perfect hair extraction...I then save it... so I can use it as a patch or a fix on some other image in the future.

Ill attach a sample of one kind of a hair brush that can be created...the brush can be made any color, it can be twisted to fit the task, and it can be blended into the existing hair, and it is used to cover over, or patch, or act as a fine edge to fix a bad hair part. Its called a solid color hair repair brush.

The file size limit on retouchPro is 100k...so the sample below will be bit small because there is a lot of fine detail in hair. The file is a Photoshop .abr (Adobe Brush) file and ive enclosed it inside of a zip file because .abr files are not supported here as attachments. You can load this .abr file directly into Photoshop CS2-CS5 after you unzip it. This kind of brush is great for solid black, brown or red hair edges...other kinds of brushes can also be created on a clear transparent background and are used for blond hair or if you need to place a whole curl within the hair line. This small size brush here should be fine for web size images...if its too small I can provide a link to the full sized 2300 pix file in a PM.

I might use a solid hair brush like this on a separate transparent layer, sample the existing hair color so it matches (or use a clipped curve adjustment layer to get a perfect adjustable match)...then use free transform, or warp, or puppet warp, to curve or twist the hair to get it into accurate position...and then use a black hide all layer mask to perfectly blend the hair patch into the existing hair. Ill use just the parts of the hair I need to cover over the problem area in the new picture. I might use just the whispy single strands...or it might be the curl itself.

Hair is a very challenging retouch skill and it takes patience and creativity and some problem solving.

Because of complicated background interference in some parts, visual confusion at the edges, or poor contrast...some hair will almost never respond to just Photoshops set of tools. Even if you pay for a plugin...even then...some situations are just too complex to get great results if you have a sloppy source image. When the edges get sloppy...thats when you need to drop back a step and resort to snipets, hair parts, or previous perfect curls on clear backgrounds to make your hair retouch repairs.

Im a guy...and I love it when I have a good hair day!!