videos

The Perfect Technique for Masking Hair

on Nov 16th 2009 with 60 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Photoshop
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • CompletionTime: 30 min - 1 hour

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Masking hair is one of the biggest problems in the photography world, so in this tutorial I will teach you all the techniques you need to remove a solid background from any photo. In this tutorial I work with  advanced tools like channels and snapshots to get a perfect and very professional final result.

Watch the Video

Tags: Videos
 
Enjoyed this Post?

Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!

By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

I'm André! I'm 18 years old and am based in Portugal. I've worked with Photoshop for 5 years, and I am an enthusiastic photographer. I hope you enjoy my work, and come to visit my YouTube channel.  

Plus Premium
 
 
  • Kevin Miller

    Nice tut. I always wondered about how to use the History brush properly. Thanks!

  • http://www.svenlito.com Sven Lito

    very useful.

  • http://www.bleedcreative.com Steve

    good first tut. Keep it up!

  • MEH!

    ugh. video tutorials…

    • http://davidappleyard.net David Appleyard
      Staff

      Hey – Drop me an email: photo@tutsplus.com – to let me know why you’re not a fan of the video tutorials. Would love to discuss it with you! Cheers

      • http://www.peax-webdesign.com Mikk

        I don’t like video tutorials either…. i prefer scrolling an image tutorial and stop reading the part of the tutorial talking about techniques i don’t know, … not easy to do with a video

        • http://www.piersdillonscott.com Piers Dillon-Scott

          I agree with Mikk, but there is also an accessibility issue with video-especially for deaf people (not to mention translation issues).

          A video tutorial and a photo/text tutorial would cater for everyone, especially as the site has great tutorials

          • Sydas

            I’m deaf and yes, I completely agree with this. I cannot STAND tutorials that are in video because I just don’t know what the heck the guy’s saying.

            Plus, step by step tuts are so much easier because they allow you to pause and go back to it later.

      • http://www.behance.net/insalaco vincenzo

        I’m not a fan either. for Real they Show more than pics but ..

        i’m italian, so, maybe i can easily read text (or take my time to do it) But, Follow Oral instruction can be hard for who have no great chance to speak and talk in english.

      • Latecomer

        I like images and texts type of tutorial, it’s easier to understand.

    • http://dullface.deviantart.com/ Dullface

      Mm, same here. Don’t like video tuts at all, too inconvenient, takes too long, just plain annoying.

      • http://danmesa.com/ Dan

        +1, like to read at my own pace, in my own accent.

        • http://www.youtube.com/drekw2 André

          I think you can take much more advantages from a video tutorial than a text/images tutorial, because with a video you can see what really happens! Also sometimes is really important see the variation of the effects when a slide is dragged to you can really understand what the effect does.

    • Simon

      I personally don’t like video tutorials either, as I like to read at my own pace (which is usually quite quick), and it is also easy to find a specific step later on.
      It can take some time to buffer, and can draw out a 10min tut to ~20min

      However, when I first started put using photoshop I found them great, as I wouldn’t miss any steps, or get confused with what area or tool someone was using.

      That said, it was a good tut. Look forward to seeing your next one.

      • Michael Foust

        Have to agree with disliking V-Tutorials.
        The video has audio, right?
        But I’m deaf so I cannot hear a thing.
        But aside that, I understood what you meant in the video.
        Good tut. :)

        • Arik

          Video tutorials should be captioned, this is an accessibility issue. I am doing my best to find a solution for this for my own up coming tutorial blog. If you guys are interested, I am willing to share.

          • http://davidappleyard.net David Appleyard
            Staff

            Absolutely – would love to hear what you come up with!

        • http://davidappleyard.net David Appleyard
          Staff

          Thanks for the input! We’ll be sure to keep a healthy mix of written and video tutorials to keep everyone happy :-)

          • http://www.peax-webdesign.com Mikk

            if the video tutorials could have Chapters + Titles when rolling over it, that could be fine for those who wants to read only a specific part of the tutorial

    • OilyCoyote

      Same here.

      The basic problem I think, is usability. With written tutorials you can make a quick scan to see if you find what you are looking for, or if you find something that catches your interest. Not only relying on the tittle, which is not a 100% truly confident source of information, but quick checking the whole tutorial.

      For more information about usability issues (like this one), go ahead and check this book, DONT MAKE ME THINK by Steve Krug. I highly recommend it for anyone who has anything to do with Web Design-(Actually any kind of design)… Its not only useful, but also fun and easy to read.

      If you need more info, go ahead and email me.

      Hope you find this useful.

      oilycoyote@hotmail.com

  • http://webiga.com ilja

    mmmmmmm

  • Tony O

    Very nice thanks for the tut!

  • http://myspace.com/raphael_sepulveda Raphael Sepulveda

    Extremely good tutorial! Thanks!!

  • S. Grossman

    Long time PS user, but I learned something new in masking. Thanks a lot.

  • http://www.liberatocreative.com Maurizio Liberato

    Cool! I was looking for something like that! :)

  • nico

    Why not ? It is a very good technic. But there are other ones, like dissociating air from body. I prefer using bezier and pencil for body. With a palette and shortcuts, it is much easier. Working first one the body preserve a better render for the body. But your technic is preserving the hair : that is a good lesson about using chanels but just for the hair. Thank you !

    • http://www.youtube.com/drekw2 André

      In my opinion it’s also a good technique for the body, and this is the reason I used snapshots. The idea of snapshots is work with many settings (in this case 2), one for the hair and other for the body.
      Actually the preview image is not the best because is visible some imperfections on the hand (bottom of the image), but the final result in the video looks much better! :)

      Thanks for the comment! :)

  • Patrick

    Where did the photo come from? Sweet!

    • Andreas Guther

      The photo is from the Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers – The Ultimate Workshop book by Jeff Schewe and Margin Evening.

      • Patrick

        Hey Andreas, thanks for your tip!

  • Marcello

    Nice tut, really nice technique i’m quite curious about one technique that i never figured out how it works that is creating another layer for the hair and using multiply blend mode. Anyone knows that?

  • http://www.igraphika.com KevinPardo

    Nice, but it will only work with a white or a unique colored background… Try this technic with a complex background… And it will fail unfortunately…

  • http://www.bryhl.com Kenneth Bryhl

    Lovely! Thank you very much

  • Arik

    @Andre

    What resolution and software do you use for screen capture?

    • http://www.youtube.com/drekw2 André

      Hi Arik!
      I used screenflow, and it’s a program exclusive for Mac.
      It is a really cool program because you can capture the video with a very high quality, and after this process you can edit you video applying zoom effects, etc…

  • http://www.audigex.com/gfxforum Tom Lynch

    Very nice tutorial, I’m going to challenge my members with something like this I think haha

  • http://erickimages.com Érick Loitière

    Hi! Nice tut. I don’t like either vid tutorial, but again thanks for this

  • http://www.sicanstudios.com Alex C.

    Nice Andre,
    but you could’ve simplified the tutorial… The technique you’re using (history tool; masking the background) is not so intuitive and time efficient! That’s my opinion.

    Anyways, nice tutorial
    Keep it up!

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/aleksivic Aleks

    Definitely love this technique… very helpful.. Thanks!

  • Andreas Guther

    For those who do not like to watch a video tutorial can read the steps in Jeff Schewe and Marting Evening’s book Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers – The Ultimate Workshop. The video tutorial in it first 2 thirds follows the book more or less step by step. The tutorial starts on page 150. The model and the background image are also from the book. I am surprised that this is not mentioned in the tutorial, unless I missed it.

    • http://www.youtube.com/drekw2 André

      Yes, this images came from the book and the is no problem with it, but this technique is very popular, and actually there is many tutorials on youtube about it, but almost of them have not good explanation about the process, so it’s not an exclusive for this book at all.

      • Andreas Guther

        There is probably no problem with using the photo or making a video following the steps outlined in the book which is indeed a great source for Photoshop techniques. And I assume you have asked the author since you probably got some money for this article. But there is in my eyes a problem if you do not mention your sources because that makes people think what they see here is your intellectual property.

  • http://www.pixelrockit.com Bartosz Oczujda

    Nice job Andre, but there is a little problem with all, not only yours hair extraction tutorials, they all work only when your subject has a good contrast and a simple background.

    And the picture you used is just perfect, the red hair give a great contrast against a whitish background.

    I just wish someone made this kind of tutorial on a “not so perfect” example :-)
    Or maybe I’ll try to do it myself :-)

    • http://www.youtube.com/drekw2 André

      Yes this background is very solid because it’s white, but his technique works very well with non solid backgrounds however it takes more time. I already tried this technique with a non solid background and it works great.
      The steps are almost the same, and the basic idea is get a withe background a black model, and for that I recommend use the brush tool and also work with channels.

      I hope this help
      André

  • http://www.creativmedia.net Rich

    Have seen and used this method many times, and is very simple and perhaps a little over complicated when you already have a picture of a subject on a white background, 9 out of 10 times, select by colour range would do the trick just as well, depending on what resolution you need to use the image at.

    What people really need/want, is a ‘perfect’ way to cut out hair when the subject has allot of background noise, ie; in front of a bush etc… this technique works reasonably well, but there are still annoying areas when doing it with those kind of photo’s.

    God tut for people who didnt know this method though, good job.

    • http://www.youtube.com/drekw2 André

      I don’t agree with your comment. First, if you try do this extraction with the select range you will see that the final result is not so perfect, and when I say “perfect” I mean see all the details of the air. Second, this technique works very well with non solid backgrounds but obviously you need to spend much more time.

  • http://www.curtiscopeland.com Curtis Copeland

    Nice work! Great use of the channels palette for generating a mask on difficult subjects like hair. Thanks for sharing!

    Curtis

    Wedding Photography Miami

  • http://www.jpgmag.com/people/digiconn PJ

    Thank You!!! I just came across this one. Masking hair has always been a challenge for me as most of my work involves hair.

    I think I will save lot of time by using this technique.

    PhotoTuts+ continues to rock \m/

  • Gilbert

    Does this technique also work with pictures that weren’t cut out before?

  • Minerva R

    Just I looking for it ! Try this technical in my last composition .
    Thanks!!

  • http://www.lencurrie.com Len

    I’ve watched and read a LOT of tutorials on masking, and I just wanted to let you know that this one was one of the best. A few techniques like ‘applying the image’ in the channels and the overlay brush (even though it would likely only work on the image you had) were great.

    Keep up the great work.

  • Norman

    Great tutorial and thank you.. Some people here seem to not like video tutorial because they like to go at their own pace.. Did they ever stop to realize that they can pause the video and proceed to do their own thing? Videos are great and keep up the good work…

  • http://www.willpeach.com Will Peach

    Andre,

    Great video! It opened me up to a few new things – specifically the history brush and mask options. Keep them coming!

  • Asnake

    prefer video tuts … thanks a lot … that really helped me a lot …

  • Billy

    I really enjoyed this tutorial, it’s very helpful, thanks! Also, as someone who learns visually I prefer V-Tuts… although I can understand why a V-Tut would be difficult to follow if the tut was not given in the viewers native language.

  • John Smythe

    I would agree with the others regarding how video tutes are a bad decision. Why would I want to spend 2-3 minutes watching the video to find out that its not something Im after, when I could ‘ve spent only 10 seconds skimming an image/text tute.
    Not to mention buffer times, bad music where people fly through the procedure – leaving you dumbfounded (not being able to see their cursor, settings used, presets, etc, etc), or someone taking 2 minutes to explain a 10 second procedure. I simply sigh, cringe and bypass video tutes altogether.
    Aside from that, show me “The Perfect Method!” using a point-and-shoot on a girl with a landscape behind her – Then, I’ll be impressed. Thats what a huge majority of people snap pics with anyway – their not pro photogs.

  • CHris

    Nice!. By the way (I’m sorry my English) about interface. How can I change my three buttons in windows Photoshop documents like appear in this video near to PS logo?

  • http://www.foto-tipps.com Fotoblog

    Very impressive result, but a lot of work also.

  • Gokou

    Is it ok to download the video. Don’t have internet at home.

  • Gokou

    Is it ok to download the video. Don’t have internet at home.