I've been attempting to cut this face from the black background. here's the result so far?

What do you guys think?

What a pain in the @$$!

I don't envy your job - I think you're doing fine so far - thr biggest problem I found was putting it on the yellow background - it shows every dark portion of the original background there is. The second I put it against a dark background it was easier to start hiding the edges.

I then did a little bit of not only extra Masking with a small tapered brush at 30-50% opacity, and then I did some painting witht the same tapered brush at 30-50% opacity to paint some of the flying hairs back in so they looked right..

Good luck - hope this helps-
-Lew

EagleWing, I think you’re doing just great. Thundering, that’s an above par job as well. And you hit the nail right on the head when you sighted that “…it shows every dark portion of the original background there is” when using a lighter background. Here I used a clipping layer after selecting out the background color (black) to help color in the edges of the hair and then blend them together to help get rid of that dark aurora you get when you extract an object from a dark background. After creating the mask and using it to select the overall object, I then contracted it by about 50 pixels and subtracting those 50 pixels from the original mask selection I then used eyedropper to select the black from within the hair in the selection and deleted it. Then using a clip layer I selectively picked colors from the surrounding hair to paint in the adjacent edges and used the blur tool to blend them together. Of course, the longer you take in refining, the better the ultimate image will look. I did this in about 45 minutes. It gets to a point when you wonder if the time it takes you to do the process if you’re not better off using the pen tool to select. I think in this case it weighs in better for the process.

Go to channels, copy red channel and Invert it. Use levels to just slightly darken, then use curves and create very slight S shape to darken the tricky parts. Next grab brush and set its blend mode to  Overlay. Press ALT to get Eye dropper for a moment and click on solid black part, release ALT and start painting. Overlay mode will allow you to go in white without affecting it, release brush and sweep one more pass starting from black. There will be some areas on face that you can simply select with marque tool and fill with black. Mask is done, CTRL click to select it and CTRL+SHIFT+I to inverse the selection. Go to layers and make background layer editable by double clicking on it, and say ok. Click on mask icon in layers palette and its extracted, every strand will be extraxted. Its a messy hair lol, so clean with soft brush the mask :)

Here is quick mask from JPEG file.

Tihomir

1) Go to channels and make a copy of the red channel.

1. Adjust Image/ajustment/levels until you have a (white) mask,

2. Paint over with white all you want to keep

3. Chose Layermask/reveal selection

4. Lighten the edges by erasing the mask with a soft brush, 25% opacity/60 flow

(According to quest ..:)

I've always hated trying to cut out hair - the little loose hairs just stick out if it's not shot right for the purpose.

If the photographer had used a hairlight/kicker this would be an easier job. Even easier if she had been photographed against white. The headache is that she was shot against black (with no rim-lighting for separation), and the goal is to put her against a light color.

Since time is always a huge factor for me, I'm only going to refine a mask just so much before I just mask a chunk of things just plain OUT and begin painting things (usually finer details) back in.

Ugh - I don't envy you, bud!
-Lew ;-)

Thank you all for your valued support and comments.
I think I'll be saving this page in favs and reading all your comments over another 3 times cos there's so many hints in here hehe.

Thanks again guys, all your vesions look TONNES better than my lame attempt hehe, but, gotta start somewhere right.

Thanks again,
EW

> Quote - 5) Lighten the edges by erasing the mask with a soft brush, 25% opacity/60 flow

Hi Tess_linn.

Can you please explain how you did the above.
I tried out your method and it works wonders. much better result than my initial attempt.
I'm just stuck on the last bit, how do you mean "erase the mask"?

Many thanks.

P.s. does this method of selecting a channel and using levels to create a mask work for all instances of creating good clipping masks?

When people say "copy the red channel" do you mean to just right click it and select duplicate?
This copies it in the channels panel. is this correct to what you guys are explaining?

Many thanks,
you guys are teaching me some VERY VERY valuable knowledge here and i'm eternally greatful.

EW

The Copy the Red Channel means click on the Channels Tab which is usually located next to the Layers tab - in the same pallette. Click on the Red channel (your image will suddenly go black and white - this is normal) and drag it to the bottom icon that is a little box-in-a-box - it will literally make a copy of that channel layer.

Hit Ctrl+L to bring up Levels, and pull the right side in to make the whites brighter - don't go TOO far with this. Then get your paint brush and paint white where you KNOW you need information, and use a soft brush around the edges when you start to get to the frayed parts of the hair. Here is where I quit painting.

Now Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail of the Channel you just finished painting, then click the eyeball back on for the entire RGB image, and click the eyeball OFF for the copied Red Channel (this is all so youo can see what you're doing, and are using the correct channel), then go back out to your Layers Tab, and hit Ctl+J to duplicate your selection.

On the layer beneath it, make whatever gradient you want.

Again, the PITA was still putting it on a light background when she was photographed against black with no compensation (like a kicker).

Here's the finished one I arrived at without painting some hairs back in.

Hope this helps - gotta go to bed now...

-Lew ;-)

This method of selecting a channel and using levels to create masks was definitely and finally laid down by quest in the Obi-Wan Kenobi thread, post 10 Nov 23, 2008. It always works because in difficult cases you can split the picture, taking on each part in turn. That said you may need to some manual finishing touches.

In this case you need to lighten up the edges of the hair (a leftover from the black background)

After you have applied the selection (control-click on the mask) and made the mask (Layer/Layer mask/Reveal selection) you have two icons in the layer panel, the picture and the mask. Make sure that the MASK is selected. Then use the ERASER with a soft brush, 25% opacity/60 flow to whiten the edges working at the real size 100%. A perfectionist put some finishing touches with the Clone stamp tool.

"When people say "copy the red channel" do you mean to just right click it and select duplicate?"

Yes. In some case the green or blue channel work better. Use the channel that has the most information.

When you choosing the channel for creating the mask, what you looking for is highest contrast. In this particular case it was red channel, very offten its blue channel.

By duplicating the channel (drag & drop to new channel icon), you simply preserving original channel and using this copy for its purpose. You can have more than one copy of course for complex masks.

With levels you just pushing that contrast little bit more to get your self job easier.

Curves are far more advanced than levels, because they offer perfect control where you want to increase contrast.

Overlay mode for brush (not in layers palette) allows you to paint more freely. Its important which color you pick at start. If you pick black, press mouse hold it and painting the mask it will completely ignore the white area. Thats why its perfect for hair.

Areas that simply cant be masked with all the above (inside face) are fixed with any of selection tools and by filling the pure black.

With mask you didnt delete anything, just hide it. So there is no need to erase anything, just click on the mask in layers palette and paint with black to hide what you want.

Tihomir

This the same method I have used also, to create a depth mask to blur out the background a little. Works Exceptionally Well!!!

Thank you so very much everyone. A virtual pint is waiting at the pub. :thumbupboth:

Just wanted to make sure I'm doing this right cos it doesnt' looks rght to me but then i'm learning a new technique so that figures haha.

I selected the mask and with an erasor I started to go around the very outer edges of the image.

OK I thought the above still had lots of black in it and figured it might be because I went johnny rambo on the red channel - creating the mask.

So I redid it and got this result much better I feel. Didn't need to use the erasor or further masking with brush tool.

I've also applied blur and highlight alterations to the skin so the eyes and mouth stand out more.

Do you guys think this is better?

Somehow thunderling got the best result allthoug he claims he didn't use any retouching at all -with the same method..:) I guess there is more to this than meets the eye.

Yeah, damn you should be an adobe marketing rep.

"More than meets the eye" is an awesome representation of what the final result of an image retouched in Photoshop is hehe. Neat

"damn you should be an adobe marketing rep"

 

On the contrary, that is what's wrong with this forum and others too, placing too much emphasis on one program while I like to use a different programs, each appropriate to the task. I searched around in the week-end after a place for people who are interested in combining photographs, drawings and 3D into works of art and actually found it right here. "The Paula Sanders Report". The Paula Sanders Report is just such a periodic column. Run by Paula Sanders Sr. Staff Writer at Renderosity. So I leave you guys, to your slumber.

 

Have a nice day.

I didn't think The Paula Sanders Reports was anything more than her column here on Rendo...? She looking for multi-media content? I'd love to produce stuff for that!

And yeah, the trick with any one of the Rendo forums is that they are software specific - and when you would try and post something in, say, the Community Forum, because it would most llikely be handled with "this particular software" then they would direct you to that specific forum.

And because we don't know what plugins the question asker might have (unless specific in the question) we basically get in the habit of ONLY providing within-the-existing-application answers.

I know it's limiting - but we also don't know what other apps they might have either (like if we were to give an answer using CorelDRAW or PhotoPaint - it would be useless other than general info - different specific tools).

Gotta run - much Photoshop to do today.
-Lew ;-)