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how to cut out hair from similar colored background?


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good_snow

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I have a photograph with a women that has brown/reddish hair against a maroon colored background and I'm having trouble keying her out. I've tried the Refine Edge tool and played with all the settings and it isn't working very well. Does anyone have any suggestions or know of any good tutorials that cover this?

Thanks!
 
After you did your best at Refine Edge tool, choose: Output to Layer mask to get a transparent background. Add a new layer behind (not on) the one you're working on and fill it with white to see better (temporarily). Now start looking at edges with zoom and Brush tool selected in Overlay blending mode start to paint on the mask with foreground color to black and fix the fringe or the hair or whatever is wrong. If it doesn't work in Overlay everywhere, back to Normal, small brush and play with opacity.
You can also try Layer>Matting>Defringe and enter a width between 1 to 2 pixels with your selection on a new layer. Good luck!
 
Thanks for the reply. I tried doing what you described and I still couldn't get it to look quite right. I posted the image I'm talking about below. The first one is the original photo with the maroon background and the second is my attempt to key the woman out with the Refine Edge tool. I've actually tried to change the color of the background to green and that didn't seem to make any difference. Any other ideas?


PhotoBefore.jpg

PhotoAfter.jpg
 
This is where we turn to the old tried and true method used by the pros: hair masks. It basically involves repainting the edges of the hair. Some images just don't separate well from backgrounds using automated masking filters (computers are stupid). A higher resolution file would help a little, but you're still going to have to repaint some hair for a high quality result. This is one of those techniques that separates the Photoshop men/women from the Photoshop boys/girls.
 
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