Masking Hair? I need pro help

[Studev]

Even worse, we have a dancing girl with swing hair for 10 sec and we have to paint out a mask , so that we're able to change the color of the hair as she dance. No even one plugin that can do this.

You can try the extract function in photoshop. I'm not sure what it can gives you, but it won't give you the 100% solution. Last time, we have to really manually paint out the hair frame by frame. But wow, great result. But you need precision to do it. It's a pain i know

[tuomok]

Sometimes the solution reveals itself by looking at individual color channels (R-G-B). And copying the best one to be your alpha channel starting point. Sadly this only works if the background color of the model is rather even...

After you have isolated the foreground you can "add detail" with the fingerpaint brush, by stretching individual hairs from the head out. That will bring back some of the crisp details you need for realism.

But you probably knew all this allready.

"If it doesn't kill you, it'll make your Wacom-arm stronger." :D

[halo]

sometimes i cheat and mask out what i can with brushes, smudging and blurring and then paint back in hair because its easier sometimes to make new hair than mask out old hair.

Its a bitch and i've never found a way of doing it apart from the hard and slow way thats any good....there are head starts as mentioned above but thats about all i've found in the last decade that i can think of.

[Goofball Jones]

I take it the background is not a nice contrasting neutral color? If so, the extract command would be a good place to start...otherwise do a tight mask into the hair cutting off all the remains of any background...then go back in and start remaking the hair by hand. Yes, it IS a pain to do this, but if you want good results you have to work a little bit. That's why we have blue and green screens today.

[Crazzy Legs]

thanks for the reply everyone. I had a feeling I would be doing this one by hand going into it.
Studev- sorry to hear about that dancing girl. Doesn't sound fun to me at all. Like you said though,the results are probobly great.

[-NG-]

Painting it out gives you the most control, it takes the longest but it gives you the most control.

[jbw]

Agreed painting tends to be the way to go with difficult alpha channels. I also tend to start with a duplicate of either the R,G or B channel then paint out and smudge as necessary. Can I also suggest that when you've finished you invert the channel (ctrl+i) just to check you haven't missed anything. I don't know why but inverting channels sometimes shows up areas I've missed or haven't painted correctly. Just another little tip. :)

ta,
Jbw

[lokki]

building on the alpha channel selection, try a soft medium-sized brush with the dodge/burn tools. doing this on a duplicated channel (given a clean background, of course), is a nice way to preserve a startling amount of detail. Just use a low exposure value and a very soft brush. oh yeah... if using a tablet (Wacom or other), turn off the size/pressure option so you have a continuous soft edge regardless of stroke pressure.

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