How to Extract Hair with Select and Mask in Photoshop - Tech Learning 4U :

Assalam.o.Alaikum

Welcome to Tech Learning 4U, 

I am your teacher Zohaib

From today I am Begning a bit of Advanced Classes.

I would not say it much advance, but

Since, I have teached very easy things in Beginners Classes

Now, a bit of difficult or complicated things are going to start

Thats why i am saying it a bit of advance classes

So, I hope you will like this series too

And our Todays topics is Select and Mask

So Let's Start

Alright Welcome Back

As you can see that here i have opend an Image of a model

And her hairs are very much detailed and messy

And my plan is to change the background of this image to new one

So first of all let me tell, where you can find select and mask option

you can take any selection tool like Marquee selection or Lasso tool or Quick Selection

When you select any one of these you will find button on the top, Select and Mask

Its not Necessary that you select it first

Yes, one more important thing

This option was named as Refine Edge in Photoshop CS6 till Photoshop CC 2014

and i dont know it has changed from 2015 or 2017

But yes, Now its Select and Mask and Its excetly the same as Refine Edge

Now Refine edge option contains all same options as Select and mask

But also some new features also has been added to it

Which iam just going to explain you

So. we used to select everything using quick selection tool

now you can directly use this option without making selection

See, I have deselected every thing by using shortcut Ctrl+D

And as i go into select and mask option you will get new panel

And it may possible that by default you will get full transparent window

This is transparent because here is the transparency option,

if you lower down the value, The image will be visible

So I will suggest you to adjust this image first on your target background

So press Ctrl+C to copy the image...

and press Ctrl+V on the new background

So now we have background layer and forground layer from we will extract the model

We want to remove the background, so that it will shown in the new background

Iam clicking on selection tool and Iam clicking on Select and Mask

You will get the target background image

So now if i lower the transparency to zero

As i set the transparency to zero, you can see the models Image

First of all lets see here, you have view option

here we have Onion Skin, Marching Ants, Overlay, On Black, On White and so on...

lets go for Overlay

As you go to overlay, you will find red color on whole image

This is the opacity of this red color, so let be where it was

If you look at here on tools, we have some options like

quick selection tool,refine edge tool, Brush tool, Lasso, Hand tool and zoom tool

So first iam taking quick selecting tool and keep on clicking to make selection

If you like you can make selection first and the use select and mask

or you can make selection later

well, the way of using quick selection tool is excetly the same..

...if you make selection while pressing Alt key, the selection will be substract, ok

and without Alt, selection will be add...

Now remember the red portion is unselected..

And remaining part is Selected, right now...

After making selection you can go either on Onion Skin or on Black and White

So if i go to black and white, it is shown the selected area from white color

At this time, this is very rough selection

So if i go to edge detection option and start to increase the Radius

one more thing i want tell you that we have some check boxes here

so, if your computer supports, you can check on High quality preview

otherwise you can turn it off

for now i keep it on to high quality

sometimes it becomes a bit of heavy, also check on Smart Radius

If i zoom, and increase edge detection, it is showing even more hair details

and you will get the idea, what result we are acheving

Now if i go to onion skin, so you can see whole layer

but now if I increase the transparency, the background is getting transparent

and the selected area is still here, lets increase the value upto 100%

if you look at edges, you will see some remaining background area

from tools you have to select Refine Edge Brush tool, Remember it name

and apply this brush on those area where the issue is

I am applying this tool very gently, dont apply it speedly

just apply only on those area where the problem exist

basically this tool in Adding those area into selection which was not in selection

I think this is good

If you look carefully there are some dark colors on the edges

The reason is, in the original image the dark color was present

thats why it is showing darker colors

but dont worry, we will fix this later

but right now, we will focus on the things which are not showing

After doing all these adjustments,

lets move ahed and right now we dont need these

options like Smoothness, Feather etc...

In Output Settings, Dont Check on Decontaminated Colors

Under Output to, Select New Layer with Layer Mask, and click ok

As you click ok, We have one more new duplicate layer with layer mask

now, we will solve these issues by right clicking on masking thumbnail

Aditionally if you press Shift key and click on mask,

the mask gets disable and our full image is still here

By right clicking on this mask and click select and mask one more time

and this time i will click on decontaminate colors

Decontaminate means the mixture and to make it pure called contamination

so this time we will decontaminate the background color

As i click decontimanate colors we have very nice and sharp result

still we have some issues on here, so will will fix it in Third step

I am Clicking OK button

and see we will get one more layer with layer mask

Now the fun part, this is our first layer, with Select and Mask

This is original layer

and we didnt apply decontaminate color before because, if i disable mask of this layer

]

so photoshop has added some colors by itself to match them with hairs

But you will get better result, if turn the mask on, and we have Nice Result here

the darker color on the hairs of this side ...

With the help of soft brush with low amount of flow

Pick the color of hairs

If you select brush tool and while pressing Alt key you can pick colors

and be careful about that you have selected Image not mask

and while pressing Alt key it will start to pick colors

so i think we should select this yellowish color and start to paint here

Remember iam painting directly on Hairs and it is removing the additional...

color of the hairs, and if i disable layer mask, I have done this

but dont worry, your result is perfect

Other thing is the background is not matched with this image

This is because of the opposite light direction of the background and foreground

so double click on the background so that it converts into layer

Press Ctrl+T, right click and select Flip Horizontol

and iam shifting this model's layer on side

Also iam hiding the black portion

So, I believe you understood this topic very clearly

and some more issue is here

so for one more time we will go to select and mask and fix this

i am choosing refine edge brush again, and applying gently here

Now we have one more layer with layer mask, and our work is done perfectly

so i hope this small task, so many peoples find it difficult, is actually easy

hope you liked it, understood it, 

 THANK YOU !!