Masking hair skills with PS mask

Hair is one of the hardest things to cover, and if the reader is a portrait photographer and uses Photoshop to synthesize the image, it must be deeply felt about the difficulty. As far as the authors know, many users are interested in this forum on the Internet. The problem most users face is that if you remove the traces of pixels around the hair, these pixels leak out the photo is the secret of using the computer to synthesize. The hair-masking method described below can be used in Photoshop and does not require any additional plug-ins, and this method works in most cases.

The first thing to point out here is that for this method to work, the background must be white or light when taken. If this is not done, it will only increase the difficulty of the task, so planning ahead is essential. All serious synthetic works require a very simple background, such as software Ultimatte AdvantEdge requires a background of blue or green. In this example, however, you will show how to use a white background. The trick here is to copy the existing color channels in the image and modify them to get a new mask channel. This saves a lot of time by using the information contained in an existing color channel to define the edges of the detail rather than using a small pen tool to depict the edges of each strand of hair on the mask. However, pen tools are still useful for depicting broad, smooth contours of a model's neck, shoulders, and arms.

1. The next steps describe how the author shoots the model and then adds a different background.

I usually use a white background when I shoot, because it's convenient for covering small hairs. In this example, the background contains some details, but you can still use the photo itself to create the mask.

Tutorial

2. First look at the color channel and copy the channel with the highest contrast.

In this example, the contrast between the background and the hair in the green channel is the highest, so drag it over the channel palette onto the Create new channel button to copy it.

3, the next steps are for the "Green copy" channel (when the reader completes these actions, make sure that the channel is selected).

You need to increase the contrast of the alpha channel to make the hair darker. To do this, select the menu "image" > "Apply Image". As the reader sees it, the target channel is "green copy" and the blending mode is superimposed, so this is equivalent to applying overlay mode to the alpha channel. In the Apply Image dialog box, you can select a variety of channel blending modes, but most of the time the author uses a positive overlay mode and tries to mix two color channels. The goal at this stage is to improve the contrast between the hair and the background to use the pixel information already in the photo.

4, the 3rd step makes the Mask channel appearance completely different, now needs to improve the contrast.

To do this, select the Brush tool, set the pattern to overlay, and toggle the foreground color between black and white. In overlay mode, when you use black paint, the drawing will only be used for darker pixels, while white paint is used only for lighter pixels. Overlay mode is a useful painting mode, allowing the user to use a large brush to gradually increase the color intensity around the black hair bundle without affecting the tint area. Continue painting, and be careful not to make the color intensity of the external hair bundle too large. I also want to point out that I like to use a pressure-sensitive pen and drawing board for painting, and in the "other dynamic" of the tone plate, the opacity control is set to "pen pressure".