extract tool

jrzyguy wrote:

I have tried and tried and tried…and YES i have read the manual and photoshop Magic…and i STILL cant get this tool to work the way that i would like when trying to mask say a person with hair that is sorta similar to the background of a photo.

To get me by over the past few years…i combine a few different approaches….with varying degrees of success. this tool seems to promise me what i want….but i just aint getting it.

Links or tips please?

regards
jj

Extract is not the whole answer; just another nice tool.

With very wispy hair make a mask from the extraction and paint in and use the various other tools. One thing I’ve had success with is the Blur tool or painting at lower opacities on the mask and then using Levels to get the definition you want.

Another thing you can do is use the History brush to paint in stuff that’s been taken out in error or on purpose.

Aside from that, use a variety of techniques. Each image is different. It requires a lot of work and practice.

Knockout 2 is also good but the learning curve is quite high.

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On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 15:33:56 -0400, "jrzyguy" wrote:

I have tried and tried and tried…and YES i have read the manual and photoshop Magic…and i STILL cant get this tool to work the way that i would like when trying to mask say a person with hair that is sorta similar to the background of a photo.

To get me by over the past few years…i combine a few different approaches….with varying degrees of success. this tool seems to promise me what i want….but i just aint getting it.

Links or tips please?

regards
jj

If the hair is a particular colour (other than black in other words) try looking in the individual channels to see where the hair stands out best. Then separate from the background (i.e. do the selection) in that channel. If necessary, use a curve on that channel alone to increase the separation first. After selection, you can return the curve to it’s previous shape.

—

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veni, vidi, reliqui

"jrzyguy" …

To get me by over the past few years…i combine a few different approaches….with varying degrees of success. this tool seems to promise me what i want….but i just aint getting it.

Links or tips please?

Hi there!

One of the most successful hair masking techniques is the following tutorial:

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=11

One thing that tutorial didn’t mention is the analysis of hair nature. When there is an interference from the ambient background, the hairy details become something like semi-transparent objects in which the colors of background reflect. To achieve a progress you will need (after masking procedure mentioned above) to:

1- Cut the whole masked area and paste it over the background of your choice, then you

2- Use the erasor tool with a threshold of 10% to dilute the hairs little bit such that they interact with the background and allow to diminish the effect of remaining matt.

I use this technique with success. I hope it will work with you. One thing I have to mention, it may be helpful to enlarge the photo you have using resampling before you do the steps mentioned in the tutorial.

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

kewl…thanks for all the advise folks! am busy cleaning my apt today…but am gonna forward these replies to work and see how it goes. Perhaps i will dust off my old chanel chops book. I get the feeling the real answer lies in doing things the old and more complicated way.

jj

"jrzyguy" wrote in message

I have tried and tried and tried…and YES i have read the manual and photoshop Magic…and i STILL cant get this tool to work the way that i would like when trying to mask say a person with hair that is sorta

similar

to the background of a photo.

To get me by over the past few years…i combine a few different approaches….with varying degrees of success. this tool seems to promise me what i want….but i just aint getting it.

Links or tips please?

regards
jj

On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 15:33:56 -0400, "jrzyguy" wrote:

I have tried and tried and tried…and YES i have read the manual and photoshop Magic…and i STILL cant get this tool to work the way that i would like when trying to mask say a person with hair that is sorta similar to the background of a photo.

To get me by over the past few years…i combine a few different approaches….with varying degrees of success. this tool seems to promise me what i want….but i just aint getting it.

Links or tips please?

regards
jj

One way that I use that seems to work fairly well is to go into channels, find the channel that shows the most contrast, copy the channel, and make a layer mask from here. You can use the lasso tool to rough in the other areas you’d like to add to the layer mask and fill the selected area with black. Ctrl+Click layer, apply layer mask and now you can fine tune the rest of the mask by painting it in. Works really well on things like hair which are usually just a plain hassel (hoff), and as long as the background is not identical, one of the channels should show the hair wisp as black, and make a quick, easy layer mask with minimal work. Hope that helps.

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh wrote:

"jrzyguy" wrote in message
news:…

To get me by over the past few years…i combine a few different approaches….with varying degrees of success. this tool seems to promise me what i want….but i just aint getting it.

Links or tips please?

Hi there!

One of the most successful hair masking techniques is the following tutorial:

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=11
One thing that tutorial didn’t mention is the analysis of hair nature. When there is an interference from the ambient background, the hairy details become something like semi-transparent objects in which the colors of background reflect. To achieve a progress you will need (after masking procedure mentioned above) to:

1- Cut the whole masked area and paste it over the background of your choice, then you

2- Use the erasor tool with a threshold of 10% to dilute the hairs little bit such that they interact with the background and allow to diminish the effect of remaining matt.

I use this technique with success. I hope it will work with you. One thing I have to mention, it may be helpful to enlarge the photo you have using resampling before you do the steps mentioned in the tutorial.

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

Good tip, thank you. Reminds me of another I got years ago and lost the link and tutorial (I hate myself for it).
Perhaps one ogf you guys knows what I mean:

It was a very reliable hair-selection way involving use of the find-edges and I believe (weird, true) solarize filters. Tha latter may be product of my imagination though, but the first I am sure of. It led to a channel with a pixelperfect b/w hair copy you could then load as masking layer. I have never seen a more reliable way since. It worked so well…. Poor me…

Martin Evening also has a nice tut on hairselection on the cd with his book Photoshop CS for Photographers. Albeit his model is blackhaired on white background, but with some adjusting his technique works for less contrasty scenes as well. Not the quickest, but very good indeed. The entire book/cd is a must-have if I ask me. But maybe I just had a lot to learn.. Pjotr

If you basically want to cut something out of somewhere, here is a free video: WWW.FATSNACKS.COM

"Pjotr Wedersteers" wrote in message

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh wrote:

"jrzyguy" wrote in message
news:…

To get me by over the past few years…i combine a few different approaches….with varying degrees of success. this tool seems to promise me what i want….but i just aint getting it.

Links or tips please?

Hi there!

One of the most successful hair masking techniques is the following tutorial:

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=11
One thing that tutorial didn’t mention is the analysis of hair nature. When there is an interference from the ambient background, the hairy details become something like semi-transparent objects in which the colors of background reflect. To achieve a progress you will need (after masking procedure mentioned above) to:

1- Cut the whole masked area and paste it over the background of your choice, then you

2- Use the erasor tool with a threshold of 10% to dilute the hairs little bit such that they interact with the background and allow to diminish the effect of remaining matt.

I use this technique with success. I hope it will work with you. One thing I have to mention, it may be helpful to enlarge the photo you have using resampling before you do the steps mentioned in the tutorial.

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

Good tip, thank you. Reminds me of another I got years ago and lost the

link

and tutorial (I hate myself for it).
Perhaps one ogf you guys knows what I mean:

It was a very reliable hair-selection way involving use of the find-edges and I believe (weird, true) solarize filters. Tha latter may be product of my imagination though, but the first I am sure of. It led to a channel

with

a pixelperfect b/w hair copy you could then load as masking layer. I have never seen a more reliable way since. It worked so well…. Poor me…
Martin Evening also has a nice tut on hairselection on the cd with his

book

Photoshop CS for Photographers. Albeit his model is blackhaired on white background, but with some adjusting his technique works for less contrasty scenes as well. Not the quickest, but very good indeed. The entire book/cd is a must-have if I ask me. But maybe I just had a lot to learn.. Pjotr