Hair Masking

[Boomn4x4]

Has anyone seen any good tutorials on masking hair? I've seen a couple, but I havn't come across a good one yet. Seems like the general solution is to desaturate and adjust the curves to get a good mix of contrast and then futher adjust using a black and white pen in overlay mode to get the all the hair out, but when I do it this way, I'm still losing detail or getting too much.

 

[oldmacman]

Has anyone seen any good tutorials on masking hair? I've seen a couple, but I havn't come across a good one yet. Seems like the general solution is to desaturate and adjust the curves to get a good mix of contrast and then futher adjust using a black and white pen in overlay mode to get the all the hair out, but when I do it this way, I'm still losing detail or getting too much.

Shoot the portrait against a hi key then use Select>Colour Range... in PS. Once you have the key colour selected, inverse the mask and use the mask refine tool to preserve the amount of detail you need.

 

[Boomn4x4]

What if you don't have the luxury of having the background in a consistent color key?

 

[Alpha]

What if you don't have the luxury of having the background in a consistent color key?

Then you use a more powerful masking plugin and cross your fingers, or you spend a lot of time masking by hand.

 

[oldmacman]

What if you don't have the luxury of having the background in a consistent color key?

Does that mean you have a one time shot and cannot reshoot? Can you post the pic?

 

[DaevidClarke]

work in channels. duplicate the channel that has highest contrast between hair and the background. adjust levels to get higher contrast. then burn the edges of the hair (not too much), or dodge the light areas around it. if there is more than one color you can do this for more than one channel. than just fill in the areas you want selected with black and click on the selection icon on the bottom of the channels window. return to RGB or CMYK (whatever youre using) and the hair should be masked out. thats the way ive always done it, never had a problem. using CS4 btw.

 

[Derrel]

An overview of Corel KnockOut software for removing backgrounds

 

[Boomn4x4]

What if you don't have the luxury of having the background in a consistent color key?

Does that mean you have a one time shot and cannot reshoot? Can you post the pic?

Its more so a general question than a specific question. I'm just trying to learn new techniques.

 

[DJH]

Cs5 has some new features in the refine edge tool that is good for this. I saaw a tutorial on youtube cutting out a model with stray hairs and moving to new background. Worked great. Forget vid name though.

 

[Alpha]

This thread really belongs in Beyond the Basics.

 

[oldmacman]

What if you don't have the luxury of having the background in a consistent color key?

Does that mean you have a one time shot and cannot reshoot? Can you post the pic?

Its more so a general question than a specific question. I'm just trying to learn new techniques.

I'd say get a good shot to work with first. To illustrate it to yourself take the shot two ways and see if the key method helps. It's going to save a ton of time in post.

 

[Big Mike]

Having to mask hair (especially manually), can teach you a valuable lesson....deal with it before you shoot (in-camera, as they say).

Shoot to get the background that you want, rather than trying to mask off your subject and fix it later. If you do intend on extracting your subject from the background, then light your subject (and/or background) so that there is clear separation.

This is one of those things, that once you do it and experience it for yourself, you will probably say "Ahhh, that was sooooo much easier".

 

[ShutterSpeed]

work in channels. duplicate the channel that has highest contrast between hair and the background. adjust levels to get higher contrast. then burn the edges of the hair (not too much), or dodge the light areas around it. if there is more than one color you can do this for more than one channel. than just fill in the areas you want selected with black and click on the selection icon on the bottom of the channels window. return to RGB or CMYK (whatever youre using) and the hair should be masked out. thats the way ive always done it, never had a problem. using CS4 btw.

For me this is the best method. Using the channel mixer to establish essentially a figure-ground image, then creating a mask on the original and applying image to that mask. Of course, it requires some tweeking and some cleaning up, but its FAR simpler and more accurate than manual masking.

 

[shmne]

Buy some cheap green fabric and shoot on that.

As long as you take care of your lighting, window lighting works well, you can key out the green in little to no time flat. I think it'll be like $20 for a decent sized piece.

Green works a lot easier than white, blue being a better option but most of the time people wear blue :-\. Any other color is just a straight up no since they will mess with skin tones.

As far as not being a consistent key color, this is normal. I key 5-6 times just to ensure I don't lose any detail in the subject. Truth is I use a video editor to do my keying since they are much more powerful (specifically I use final cut pro). That is only when I don't want to cut out the subject due to it possibly taking a year or so.

You can get the same effect in photoshop by just using selective color over and over again, just slowly chiseling away.

Obviously follow the tips to enhance contrast as much as possible first, and I also suggest using the selective coloring to apply a mask so that you can hand paint in / out hairs.

This is just stream of mind coming out so sorry if its choppy, just haven't had to key out hair in a long time xD

 

[Christie Photo]

I thought this one was pretty good.

-Pete

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj-SjDE1ldg"]Selecting hair[/ame]